The coming of Pinnacle Oil & Gas Limited’s $1bn products terminal is, without question, a welcome addition to the number of players in the petroleum industry’s value chain. Located right inside the Lekki Free Trade Zone in Lagos, the facility, implemented in phases, is said to cost over $1 billion. The initial phase is said to have the capacity to store 300 million litres of refined petroleum products. This, the promoters said will ultimately increase to about one billion, in addition to an ultra-modern Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) Terminal to facilitate import and export of LPG.

Among other many promises, its promoters also say that the facility will revolutionize the downstream oil and gas industry by enabling the direct delivery of petroleum products from large vessels, which would otherwise have been unable to berth anywhere on the Nigerian coastline. In the words of the company’s chief executive, Peter Mbah, the big idea is to promote the efficiency of the downstream sector by eliminating the need for expensive vessel lightering and the associated incidence of demurrage for visiting mother vessels.

The investment obviously speaks to the nation’s reality in more ways than one. First, it is an attestation of faith in the Nigerian economy, particularly at a time of dwindling investments across the board, a trend that has been more pronounced in the aftermath of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Secondly, in a sector that has become notorious for inefficiency and wastes, it has the potential to take out, root and branches, the rentier economy linked to the hopelessly inadequate distribution facility at Atlas Cove, thereby enabling the nation to optimise its potential in the downstream sector. Thirdly, to the extent that the investment couldn’t have been driven by anything other than the huge capacity gaps which still exist in the industry’s value chain – since refined fuel, whether imported or not, or even LPG, would need to be kept in proper storage – the economy can only be better served in the circumstance. In any event, if merely for the reign of anarchy and allied destruction foisted on the Apapa axis by tanker drivers which it seeks to consign to the past, the investment in that alternative location would ordinarily be more than welcome.

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