Fuel Scarcity: PPPRA Says No Cause For Alarm

As the fuel scarcity continues to bite harder for the second week, the Petroleum Pricing Regulatory Authority (PPRA) has assured that there is no cause for alarm and that fuel queues will disappear by the weekend.

This is even as the Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria (MOMAN) threatened that the scarcity of fuel currently being experienced in major cities across the country will persist except government acts fast to pay outstanding subsidy claims.

The group said that unless government facilitates the payment of petrol subsidy claims, its members will not consider the importation of products, adding that they are constrained from importing petrol due to the non-payment of their subsidy claims.

However, appearing before the Senate Committee on Petroleum Downstream, yesterday, the PPPRA boss, Farouk Ahmed, explained that the current fuel scarcity was a manifestation of the problem the devaluation of the naira in November last year caused in the sector. According to him the recent events have to do with the delay in the arrival of cargoes, adding that the non-arrival of cargoes made it difficult for petroleum motor spirit (PMS) to be delivered.

He said, “What actually complicated it was the devaluation of naira twice. The first one that took place on November 28, 2014, when the naira went from N155 to N168 to $1 and the second one that took place on February 18, 2015, brought the exchange rate to N199 to $1.