TheCable

Ibe kachikwu, minister of state for petroleum resources and group managing director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) says he expects the ongoing scarcity of petrol to be “completely eliminated over the next two months”.

Speaking with state house correspondents on Wednesday after a closed-door meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari, Kachikwu said the corporation would pile up the nation’s reserves with all the petroleum products produced locally.

“I think if we do that – although  I don’t want to put a time frame – I will expect that over the next two months…. Of course, you are aware the SAP programme begins in April ‎so over the next two months we should see quite frankly a complete elimination of this,” he said.

“Our strategy is that whatever is produced in the refineries will not go for sale. We are going to keep them in strategic reserve because the key problem here is that there is no reserve anytime there is gap in supply it goes off.

“So, we are going to dedicate the next couple of months to moving all the products that we produce to strategic reserve so that we can pile up reserves position in the nation and that will push up the reserves in the nation.

“Believe me, this is giving me sleepless nights and we are working on it and we are committed to making this go away. Nigerians should please bear with us.”

Confirming that the unions in the oil and gas industry had expressed their concerns over the delay in the passage of the petroleum industry bill (PIB) and the persistent fuel scarcity in the country, he stated the preparedness of the federal government to work harmoniously with the unions to address the inadequacies in the industry.

“The PIB, the union wants us to obviously work harder than we do and try to get the PIB passed as soon as possible.

“They are worried about the fuel scarcity issue‎ and they want a long-term solution to this issue. They are worried about the refineries and are thankful we didn’t sell the refineries without looking to work collaboratively with them to see how to make the refineries work.

“They are worried about the utilization of depots and how best to do that; they are worried about ‘all kinds of logistics issues that plague the oil industry.

“They are worried about job loss in the sector arising from the position of majors who feel that the economy is giving rough end of the sticks and then try to whittle down staff.”

The meeting was also attended by Igwe Achese, the national president of the national union of petroleum and natural gas workers (NUPENG) and Olabode Johnson, national president of the petroleum and natural gas senior staff association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN).