Fuel Scarcity Will Ease Off Next Week, Says NNPC Boss

The Group Chief Executive Officer, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation(NNPC) Limited, Mele Kyari, on Tuesday assured Nigerians that the fuel scarcity being experienced in some parts of the country will reduce by next week.

He said this during an interview shown on Channels Television on Tuesday evening.

He assured that the queues at the fuel stations would disappear, adding that there would be significant improvement in the next one week

Kyari said, “Now within the next one week, I’m not saying that you’re going to have zero queues within the next one week, no, because a number of things are out of our control, and of course the market forces will determine some of these issues.

“But I believe that we’re going to see substantial and relative ease compared to today in the next one week.

“I apologise for the situation on behalf of all of us in the oil and gas industry.”

The NNPC Boss blamed the fuel scarcity being experienced in some parts of the country on logistics challenge.

According to him, the scarcity began with a glitch in road failure resulting from the floods that swept 31 states of the country last year.

He stated further that a three-day glitch in the transport of fuel would take about three weeks to resolve.

He said, “We have a huge logistics challenge and this has been persistent in the last four to five months. But how did it start? It is important to know what happened.

“First, there was a glitch in terms of road failure around certain axis because of the flood which nobody has control over. We were unable to move product to another efficiently.

“Once we have a glitch of three days, it would require at least three weeks to resolve the challenge.

“Once, we have this situation, a number of things come into play. One is that arbitrage will come, people would like to take advantage of the situation, and they will move product from where it is sold cheaply to where it is expensive.

“Greed will push people to hoard the products in their tanks until they are able to sell them at the maximum price.

“There were also unplanned changes. For instance, once products land in this country, we have to take them by small vessels to the depots.

“The cost of hiring those vessels shifted from $21 January last year to $80 today and our compensation template under the current pricing regime didn’t see that coming.”

Kyari also stated that managing trucks and depots across the country posed a secondary challenge to the distribution of fuel across the country.

He apologised to Nigerians for the difficulties the situation had caused while stating that there would be improvements in the situation in the coming week.

“I apologise for the situation on behalf of all of us in the oil and gas industry. Now within the next one week, I’m not saying that you’re going to have zero queues within the next week, no, because a number of things are out of our control, and of course, the market forces will determine some of these issues.

“But I believe that we’re going to see substantial and relative ease compared to today in the next one week.”