It is a thing of sadness that Nigeria, a major oil producing country, suffers from fuel scarcity almoston a monthly basis.
No matter the excuse the authorities give, scarcity comes from either inadequate supply or logistic problems and it seems that there have been no serious efforts by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited ,the main petrol supplier to the market and the marketers to find a lasting solution to the recurring shortages.
Indeed, for the past three months, Abuja residents and other Nigerians, have had to live with regular petrol scarcity and as a cycle of scarcity ends, it takes a short while for another one to rear its ugly head.
Why is the situation so? As earlier said , NNPCL is the sole supplier and sometimes inadequate supply or logistic issues may cause scarcity. However, in well-run fuel supply systems, such supply hiccups could occur only once in a while, not on a monthly basis. The economic losses that occur whenever the economy is hobbled by these avoidable fuel shortages are incalculable. Thus, they are not things serious countries should allow to happen regularly but unfortunately, fuel shortages have become regular
issues in Nigeria.
What is the solution? In the short term, the solution lies in the NNPCL ensuring enough importation of petrol and supplying it to marketers through a larger number of depots.
As said earlier, whenever there is scarcity, something is definitely wrong with the supply of the product to the market. In the medium and long term, Nigeria needs to focus on achieving local production of adequate petroleum products by 2023. At the moment, the country imports all the petrol it consumes-an unprecedented backwardness among nations that produce oil. It is a fact that the government, through NNPCL, currently has four refineries with a total refining capacity of four hundred and forty five thousand barrels per day, but the plants have been producing nothing for decades.
However, NNPCL has promised recently that one of the two refineries in Port Harcourt, the sixty thousand barrel-per-day-old Port Harcourt Refinery currently under rehabilitation, will start operations
in the first quarter of 2023. It t will be a good thing if the plant starts production as scheduled. The other one hundred and fifty thousand barrels per day refinery in Port Harcourt is also being simultaneously rehabilitated.
The major project most Nigerians are looking forward to now is the six hundred and fifty thousand barrel per day Dangote Refinery, which is expected to end Nigeria’s dependence on imported petrol. What is unsure for now is the time that the project will be completed.
The latest information on the refinery says that it is ninety eight percent completed but it is also simultaneously being suggested that it could be ready by June 2023.
Definitely, when Nigeria is able to produce the petrol it needs, the problems of subsidy and scarcity would be easily dealt with.
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