TheCable

Ibe Kachikwu, minister of state for petroleum resources, on Monday rendered a poem on oil, during which he expressed assurance that its prices would rise again.

Speaking at the sixth African Petroleum Congress in Abuja on Monday, Kachikwu said the prices may not rise too high, but they would also not stay too low.

In the poem, Kachikwu, who was publisher of defunct Hints magazine and was also a fiction writer, eulogised black gold and its prospects for the days to come.

“I was asked by an ephemeral subject being whose name is oil to say a few words on its behalf,” Kachikwu said before the rendition.

“My name is oil, the very kind people who are kind to me call me black gold. The ones who hate me call me crude.

“I worry for my future; everyone now talks down on me. Even farmers who trembled at the sight of my name are now strategizing against me.

“And all my beneficiaries, me have they abandoned. All because the producers have lost their tracks. But I would rise again, and when I do, I will take no prisoners.

“I would new technologies control, I will new technologies control. I will my supremacy confirm. I will my respect regain.

“And my pricing, not to low, not to high, but I would not allow prices to humiliate me. All of you in OPEC, APPA, GCEF and all such bodies who have shown me no respect recently, soon, you’ll eat your words.”

Global oil prices plunged at a record low in January, when Brent crude – the global oil benchmark – traded at $27.10 per barrel.

OPEC daily basket price stood at $35.62 a barrel Friday, 11 March 2016, compared with $35.23 the previous day.

According to OPEC secretariat, the monthly average for crude oil was at $26.50 in January, $28.72 in February and $33.65 from the beginning of March.