Major oil marketers have warned that the current
scarcity of petrol will worsen during the Christmas and New Year period if
nothing is done to reverse the ugly trend.
According to a top official of the Major Oil
Marketers Association of Nigeria, who asked not to be named, with the expected
demand upsurge during the yuletide period, the shortage will worsen except
supply is increased substantially.
The daily petrol demand in the country is
currently in the region of 40 million litres, but it was gathered that the
market was currently being under-supplied.
The official told our correspondent on the telephone
on Tuesday that the main cause of the current scarcity of the product was
inadequate supply.
He said, “The Federal Government should pay us
our money (subsidy money) so that we can flood the market with petrol. The
Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation has not been supplying enough petrol to
the market and the NNPC alone cannot do it.
“The System 2B pipeline being out of service is
just a cheap excuse. The real reason is that supply is inadequate and until we
resume full fuel importation under the subsidy arrangement, the shortage will
not go away.”
“The Federal Government still owes us over N100bn
and it has been paying the debt piecemeal,” the official added.
The Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala,
recently said the N888bn allocated for subsidy payments in the 2012 budget
should be enough to pay petroleum products’ importers.
She told journalists in Tokyo, Japan, recently
that the fund had not been exhausted and should be enough to pay the subsidy
bills for this year.
“We have not exhausted the fund and there may not
be a need for a supplementary budget,” Okonjo-Iweala said.
The Federal Government spent over N1.7tn on fuel
subsidy in 2011, but it had since tightened the payment system and is currently
prosecuting some oil marketers for subsidy fraud.
The government is also making efforts to revamp
the nation’s comatose refineries with about $1.6bn set aside for their
turnaround maintenance.
The nation has 445,000-barrel per day crude oil
refining capacity but has been relying on petroleum product imports for
domestic consumption.
The government has, however, invited the original
builders of the refineries in Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna to help revamp
them.
Also, it has earmarked N971bn for petroleum
subsidy payments in the 2013 budget estimates presented to the National
Assembly by President Goodluck Jonathan.
The government’s efforts, according to analysts,
suggest that it may not completely remove fuel subsidy until it gets the local
refineries working optimally.
Meanwhile, the Federal Government is targeting to
raise the amount in the Excess Crude Account to $10bn between January and
February, 2013.
Our correspondent gathered from sources close to
the Ministry of Finance that the government was seeing the balance in the
account, currently at $8.4bn, climbing to $10bn by the first quarter of the
year.
It was gathered that the Finance ministry was
anticipating that the fund would increase to $10bn, even if deductions had to
be made from the account to pay for petroleum subsidy in 2012.
The country currently saves oil revenue above the
benchmark budgeted price of $72 per barrel in the ECA.
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