Former Nnpc Boss Reveals Why Nigeria Can’t Meet Petrol Demand

Source: thewillnigeria.com

BEVERLY HILLS, March 14, (THEWILL) – A former Group Managing Director, GMD, of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, Chief Chambers Oyibo has revealed that the major reason why Nigeria is still unable to meet fuel demand is because of price fixing of petroleum products by the federal government.

Insisting that price fixing should be left for the industry and not the government; he told Daily Trust in an exclusive interview that the action of the federal government was responsible for inadequate refineries and deluge of product imported into the country.

“After all, it is not the government that tells us how much to pay for our telecommunication services and phone calls. But where there is competition, those prices would surely come down,” he argued.

Oyibo added that “the refineries are not working not because of the ineffectiveness of the staff but mostly because of the security situation. The pipelines supplying crude oil to the refineries are always being attacked. So, even if these refineries are privatised, and vandalisation of the pipelines continues, these refineries cannot operate well.”

“So, either we are able to police the pipelines more effectively or we go the expensive way of redoing all those pipelines and bury them deep, production would continue to be interrupted. If NNPC is to be an integrated oil and gas company, it should own the refineries but run them effectively and government should now take care of all the security issues.”

Speaking on the purported unbundling of the state oil corporation, the erstwhile GMD faulted the manner the federal government announced the unbundling without requisite consultations with stakeholders in the nation's oil and gas industry.

According to him, “Government is not bound to consult people like us. However, we are all stakeholders in the NNPC and those of us who have spent all our lives in the oil industry, which in my own case, 50 years, we would like to still contribute because we will like the country to have an effective structure for the NNPC. No single human being is all-knowing. So others also want to contribute.

Oyibo disclosed that the labour unions were right to have contested the manner the unbundling was announced, arguing that since they were the operators of the company, the progress of the company should be in their own interest.