Prosperity Okechukwu Is my name as usual.

Okechukwu Nnodim
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation has reduced its importation of Premium Motor Spirit , popularly known as petrol , from about 95 per cent to 50 per cent, the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr . Ibe Kachikwu , has said .
According to Kachikwu , the reduction has paved the way for massive investments in the downstream oil sector , as marketers have resumed importation of PMS following the petrol price modulation mechanism introduced by the government in May last year .
The minister , who disclosed this in a podcast message posted on his Facebook page on Saturday, also explained how his ministry was able to end the fuel subsidy regime , ensure petroleum product availability , as well as improve governance efficiency in the oil and gas sector .
Kachikwu said , “ First we ’ ve moved from a fully subsidy based sector to a partially liberalised sector . I say partially because we haven ’ t quite achieved the template to have a fully liberalised sector . What that has done for us is that it has reduced consumption from 50 million litres to 37 million litres a day .
“ Some of that figures are fraud – based , others are potential diversion numbers , but what is happening now is that the effect of our response curbed the appetite for consumption and left us with a much more robust reserve .
“ In addition , the pricing governance , which was a modulating concept , enabled us to come closer to what the realities of pricing were and so this enabled marketers to jump back into the business and continue to massively import.
He added , “ So what you find over a period of between when we introduced this measure (in May 2016 ) till towards the end of last year , was that the NNPC reduced its importation profile from supplying about 90 to 95 per cent of the market to about 50 per cent, which was massive , providing jobs, activity , investment and stability . ”
Prior to Kachikwu ’ s statement , the NNPC had often said it was the major supplier of petroleum products , particularly PMS , supplying over 90 per cent of what is consumed across the country.
The minister further noted that the government had eliminated subsidy payments to oil marketers substantially , but stressed that the downstream oil sector had continued to encounter challenges .
Kachikwu said , “There isn’ t fuel scarcity , we are not short of products , but yet the downstream and midstream sectors continue to remain challenged . And what we are going to do is to analyse what we have done so far and begin to throw solutions to some of these challenges .
“ When we first moved in , we had refineries that were not producing, fuel subsidy issues of almost N15 bn monthly expenses, massive diversion of petroleum products across borders . We are consuming about 50 million litres of products at the time , but that substantially has reduced now .
“ We had issues of pricing efficiency and governance , for at that time the prices we were selling at were so ridiculously below what the sustainable prices are . And you find a situation where basically marketers disappeared from the industry . So we had massive shortages , queues and everything seemed to be breaking down . We ’ ve since come out from that . ”
The minister said Nigeria should start moving away from the use of products like petrol , kerosene and diesel to using liquefied petroleum gas .
He said , “ The reality is that all over the world everybody is moving to cleaner fossils . LPG provides that for us , gas does the same for us . So we need to begin to look at how we can install pipelines for LPG and take it to places of its consumption , where we can have vehicles that have the capability to potentially use gas in order to reduce PMS usage . ”
To achieve this , Kachikwu said the government would collaborate with stakeholders in the sector in order to effectively meet its long- term target in the sector .

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