The National Chief of Staff of the Petroleum Retailers Outlet Owners Association In Nigeria (PETROAN), Emmanuel Inimgba, has indicated that power transition issues in the PPMC are to blame for the lingering fuel scarcity and long queues experienced across most parts of the nation.

Commuters and transporters have had to bear the brunt of these recent happenings as filling stations now sell between N195 to N200 per litre.

Speaking on the state of the issue during Channels Television’s flagship show, Sunrise Saturday, Inimgba insisted the slow power transition process within the subsidiary arm was hurting the economic activities

“There is this transition going on in this former PPMC .PPMC is no longer PPMC what you have now is NNPC retail which is for filling station owners and retailer and you have NNPC trucking which is for vessels tank farms and others.

“NNPC based on these changes that are coming up has not been made public to Nigerians to know what is actually playing out. Products that are meant to be distributed up till now; one or two persons in former PPMC are still there as transition processes are ongoing and they are yet to transmit powers to the next persons,” he said.

Asked how the transition process has affected the price of these products, the PETROAN representative said, “They came up with a portal called customer express portal it is for every marketer and every retailer. Once you are licensed with them to do business with them they make sure you are on board. Time to time you apply for allocation of products, there is no need for you to meeting a staff.

“But this is not happening right now as I speak to you marketers are not allocated products we don’t know how to manage any more it is confusing and troubling that is why I say whatever is holding the transition in former PPMC 100% should be done,” he explained.

Speaking further, Inimgba maintained that NNPC was keeping the public as well as necessary stakeholders in the dark over the availability of petroleum products

However, ex president of PENGASSAN, Mr Peter Esele aslo a guest on the show said the current situation experienced in the country is courtesy of disputes between the NNPC and depot owners over price regulations.

“Once we have scarcity as we see it, you should just know that there is a disagreement between NNPC and marketers on what they should pay you are having a cost overrun so they can’t pay at N170 or N175 is what is playing out.

“I think it has to do with government policy in the oil and gas sector in the short term .But what Nigerian need right now is this government needs to make a decision in the interim between now and May 29^th in the oil and gas and to address the oil and gas,” he said.

Esele asserted that another difficulty to overcome was the access to foreign exchange to carry out transactions in as short period of time

He added that, “Depot owners are using dollars to carry out these transactions. Nobody will give you a vessel in Naira and if they are going to give you a vessel in Naira, they are going to do a conversion and the conversion rate will be done in with the parallel market because they can’t source that Dollar from CBN in 24-48 hours.”

Esele also revealed ,”I cannot tell you how long it will last, the reason they are not talking is because we have to define subsidy, can they continue subsidy that is an issue, and how much we have to agree for marketers to sell at pump price. But I will tell you before Christmas, NNPC will find a way around it, but the underlying fact is get ready for price increase this is where it is dovetailing to.” (Channels TV)

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