PENGASSAN plans suppression of marketers

The Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria issued an alarm on Monday that their findings showed that the price of Premium Motor Spirit, popularly referred to as petrol, had risen to as much as N650/litre in some locations.

It said this was due to the long-standing scarcity of the commodity, which worsened in Abuja and many parts of the country on Monday, when it called on the federal government to revoke the licenses of oil sellers involved in hoarding PMS .

This came as our correspondent discovered that the 14-member Steering Committee on the Supply and Distribution of Petroleum Products recently approved and assembled by the federal government to end the long-standing scarcity of gasoline had not been inaugurated.

The commission, chaired by Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), was announced last Tuesday by State Minister of Petroleum Resources Chief Timipre Sylva.

“The committee has not yet been inaugurated and cannot begin its work without proper inauguration. This is because the chairman has been traveling around lately,” explained an impeccable source at the Federal Ministry of Petroleum Resources, pleading not to be named due to lack of permission.

Regarding the scarcity of petrol across the country, PENGASSAN stated that it contacted its members of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, who were responsible for allocating the products to marketers.

It said it also contacted its members of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority in various depots and terminals responsible for issuing cargo clearance, monitoring compliance, route inspection, measurement calibration/maintenance, accurate delivery to trucks, tracking of data, etc., about the need to perform their tasks quickly.

“While we understand that the parameters implied in the old PPPRA and now NMDPRA template have since changed due to a number of economic vagaries such as exchange rate fluctuations, ship charter fees and the cost of diesel fuel, there is insufficient justification for gasoline to are sold for such a high price, subjecting the masses to further hardship,” the association stated in a statement jointly signed by its president, Festus Osifo, and secretary, Lumumba Okugbawa.

It added: “Even though we have some good marketers who tend to follow the rules, others who are overbearing have used methods to create artificial scarcity in others to uncontrollably increase the price of the product , as the prices of the product are now between N185 to N650 depending on your location and point of sale.”

The union stated that from data available to PENGASSAN from its members, there was more than 30 days of PMS sufficiency nationwide, and thus there was no basis for the current scarcity and hardship to which Nigerians were exposed.

“We hereby call on NMDPRA management to force all marketers and retailers to make the products available at an approved price.

“They should immediately mobilize all their personnel in various locations around the country to monitor compliance and anyone who does not want to have their license revoked to act as a deterrent,” the association said.

It continued: “Should this collusion continue unchecked, we will not hesitate to work with other stakeholders to ensure that Nigerians are not further exploited. One stitch in time saves nine.”

Meanwhile, PENGASAN sympathized with Nigerians about the hardship currently facing the scarcity and drastic rise in the price of PMS.