With the way issues keep springing up in the oil and gas industry, the onus falls on rampant fuel importers to rethink and do what is right for Nigeria and not themselves alone, says the combined body of crude oil refiners.

This year, especially in the past six weeks, confrontations have occurred between private refining organisations like the Dangote Group and regulatory agencies over attempts to sabotage those with the capacity to get rid of long-standing heavy reliance on petrol importations draining the country’s FOREX.

Since it was commissioned by the immediate past President of Nigeria Muhammadu Buhari in May 2023, the 650,000-barrel-per-day Dangote Oil Refinery has struggled to maintain maximum capacity production as a result of not getting sufficient crude oil supply to operate the plant and produce desperately needed fuel.

After several postponements, August is the new date when the largest single-train refinery in the world will be able to start churning out petrol for consumption based on information that came out of the plant last month.

The President and Chief Executive Officer of the Dangote Group Aliko Dangote hosting journalists in July opened up about challenges which then brought up a subtle reply by the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority Chief Executive, Mr Farouk Ahmed surrounding an interest to monopolise parts of the energy market by the group.

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While the accusations and counter-replies go on, the Publicity Secretary of the Crude Oil Refiners Association of Nigeria, Mr Eche Idoko has confirmed that this moment in Nigeria’s history doesn’t need further imports of petrol. Instead, what the focus should be on is to export out of the country to ease immense pressure on the Naira.

For the products that we have in-country capacity, the Federal Government should stop issuing import licences on them, like diesel and petrol, says Mr Idoko speaking to Punch Newspaper.

For the many years that the country-owned refineries weren’t functioning, members of the Depot and Petroleum Products Marketers Association of Nigeria singularly carried the nation on their backs to ensure the citizens had an adequate supply of both petrol and diesel although there were sometimes issues with product quality.

Having served substantially well in the decades that have passed, CORAN is thinking they ought to hang their boots and seek better ways of contributing that don’t place enormous burdens on the final customers meaning households and businesses who need fuel to power their affairs when electricity supply are not readily available.

In the interview with Punch, the public secretary agrees that importers are also investors, but it is an opportunity cost for them. He questions: What value do depot owners create? Depot owners will ask you for a foreign exchange. Because of their cost of operation, and because of the middlemanship, depot owners will push the price up by about ₦150.

Right now, I can tell you that independent marketers are buying petrol from depot owners at almost ₦800. If you remove these depot owners, it can’t be like that. An oil depot cannot be a viable plan for any country that wants to survive. A depot should be a placeholder pending when the refining capacity will increase.

Unraveling things

Welcoming the leadership of Nigeria’s House of Representatives to his plant wrapping up July, Aliko Dangote accused some staff members of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited and unidentified oil traders of operating a blending plant in Malta, an island country in Europe. He had made this remark at the time to connect instances of dirty fuel in the country.

This revelation, in addition to Dangote’s claim that international oil companies (IOCs) were starving his refining company of crude oil, has led to a planned Senate public hearing to investigate sabotage in the petroleum industry proposed for 10 September 2024.

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Preliminary discussions have been held concerning this. It witnessed the presence of NNPC Group Chief Executive Officer, Mele Kyari before a Senate Ad-hoc Committee investigating the issues two days ago.

At the meeting where the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) was also in attendance, Mr Kyari denied any effort coming from his organisation seeking to put the oil industry in disarray. He wants the public hearing to be held in about a month to be televised and others also agreed.