Kachikwu Promises Fuel Scarcity Will End By April 7,Explains How He Will End it.

The minister of State for Petroleum
Resources Ibe Kachikwu announced
that fuel lines will end by April 7th,
amid significant public pressure.

 He
made the announcement after apologizing for his
“magician” comment and proceeded to explain
the country’s fuel scarcity.

The minister cited “old and dilapidated” refineries
in Nigeria as the major source of fuel scarcity.

He maintained that they will be “revived to full
capacity” with appropriate funding.

Mr. Kachikwu
added that the government will be seeking the
services of consultants to assist in the
revitalization and management of Nigeria’s
refineries.

However, even if Nigeria’s refineries were
operating at full capacity, Mr. Kachikwu said
that they would still fail to meet local demand.

“The design of the Nigerian refineries was such
that the component of Premium Motor Spirit
(PMS) versus other products was almost a 50/50
percent relationship. Most world refineries now
provide PMS at about a 70 to 80 percent ratio,”
he explained.

In order to remedy this, the government will
utilize other sources of refining petrol and will
depend on private refineries, such as Dangote
refinery.

Mr. Kachikwu stated that Nigerian refineries
perform poorly due to fraud and lack of
maintenance.

“Over the last 10 to 15 years, we have not done
a serious, conclusive turn around maintenance of
these refineries; the refineries are on average 30
to 40 years old,” he explained.

“We have also had issues of fraud. It got to a
point where I started wondering whether as we
repair this, somebody was going out there to
destroy it, so that contracting will be done.”

Despite these problems, Mr. Kachikwu is
confident that fuel lines will end by April 7.

“We expect that between now and about the
6th or 7th of April, the fuel queues
will disappear, the Direct Sale-Direct Purchase
system will begin and the foreign exchange
allocation [of petrol] will see us smoothly
through the track,” he said.