Marketers predict fuel scarcity after nationwide strike

Posted by admin General Politics, Latest Politics, Oil Politics, Women Politics Monday, January 16th, 2012

January 16, 2012 by Okechukwu Nnodim

Nigerians will have to contend with the scarcity of fuel for a while whenever the strike action embarked upon by the organised labour to protest the removal of subsidy on petrol is eventually called off.

The weeklong strike has crippled economic activities in most parts of the country with fuel marketers predicting that it will take a while for supply of products to the different outlets to stabilise.

According to them, the shortage in the supply of petrol on Saturday and Sunday was largely due to the strike, which commenced last Monday and stretched till Friday.

Our correspondent gathered that most importers had suspended bringing in petrol due to uncertainties caused by the strike.

They stressed that the final outcome of the talks between the organised labour and the Federal Government would determine when they would resume importation.

“The Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency had stated it clearly that no marketer will get petrol subsidy after January 1, 2012, and based on this, nobody will want to import under this condition,” said a senior official of the Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria, who pleaded not to be named because of the sensitive nature of the subject.

The source said the petrol being sold at filling stations currently had been brought into the country before the withdrawal of subsidy, adding that since then, most marketers had stopped importing the commodity.

He also expressed fears that as soon as the product in the storage facilities of most marketers was exhausted, there might be scarcity of petrol.

“The scarcity will be severe if the strike continues,” the source said.

The PPPRA had on New Year’s Day announced the formal removal of subsidy on Premium Motor Spirit, otherwise called petrol. It said this was in accordance with Section 7 of the PPPRA Act of 2004.

“By this announcement, the downstream sub-sector of the petroleum industry is hereby deregulated for PMS,” the agency said in a statement.

“Service providers in the sector are now to procure products and sell same in accordance with the indicative benchmark price to be published fortnightly and posted on the PPPRA website. Petroleum products marketers are to note that no one will be paid subsidy on PMS discharges after January 1, 2012,” the PPPRA added.

With the announcement, the pump price of petrol was raised from N65 to N141 per litre, a development that triggered mass protests across most states of the country.

The Federal Government and labour unions had been meeting to reach a compromise so that the strike action could be called off, but the meetings had been deadlocked as at Sunday evening.

-Punchwp_posts