President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday held a closed-door meeting with the leaders of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas, NUPENG, and the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, PENGASSAN, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja
Briefing State House Correspondents at the end of the meeting, the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu disclosed that the meeting afforded his principal an opportunity to review and share thoughts with the workers on areas of concerns that will promote peace and harmony in the oil sector.
In the Minister’s words, “Like you know, his Excellency has too many constituencies; first will be politics, second army and the third will be the oil industry. So matter of this nature touches his heart very much. And this is the first opportunity that the unions have had to spend a bit of time with him as a father.
“So we shared thoughts, areas of concerns and some solution potentials and agreed to collaborate and work together.”
When asked to list the concerns shared with the President, the Minister said: “I will probably highlight a few areas of concerns. The PIB, the union wants us to obviously work harder than we do and try to get the PIB passed as soon as possible. They are worried about the fuel scarcity issue and want a long time solutions to finally resolve this issue, they are worried about the refineries and are thankful we didn’t sell the refineries without looking to work collaboratively with them to see how to make the refineries work.
“They are worried about the utilization of depots and how best to do that, they are worried about all kinds of logistics issues that plague the oil industry.
“They are worried about job loss in the sector arising from the position of majors who feel that the economy is giving rough end of the sticks and then try to whittle down staff. And so we are going to be working with the oil majors to ensure that we do not experience the kind of job loss that we are hearing has the potential to occur in the sector,” he added.
He said the President also tasked the NUPENG and PENGASSAN leaders to be agents of change within the areas they work to ensure they take change on its head and make it happen.
“A lot of these problems that are on the table were quite frankly there when we came and we are doing the best we can to try and work on it. But we are looking to work collaboratively those were the assurances,” he said.
Speaking about when the fuel queues will disappear from filing stations, he said: “One of the trainings I did not receive is that of a magician, but I am working very hard to ensure some of these issues go away.
“And let’s be honest, for the five, six months we have been here, NNPC has moved from a 50 per cent importer of products to basically a 100 per cent importer. And the 445 barrels that were allocated was to cover between 50 and 55 percent importation.
“So it’s quite frankly share magic that we even have the amount of products at the stations. We are looking to see how to get foreign exchange input. The president and I discussed extensively on how to get more crude directed at importation.
“His Excellency will rather have less crude but have individuals in the society suffer less with inconveniences than have more crude and have them continue to suffer. So we are going to put a new model to enable us increase the pace and actually get majors as part of the crew of those to bring in more products so that the NNPC will sort of go back on the capacity of what it use to do and the majors will take over the balance of importation,” he added.
Continuing, he said: “I think if we do that although I don’t want to put a time frame but I will expect that over the next two months. Of course you are aware the DSAP programme begins in April so over the next two months we should see quite frankly a complete elimination of this.
“Our strategy is that whatever is produced in the refineries will not go for sale, we are going to keep them in strategic reserve.
“Because the key problem here is that there is no reserve anytime there is gap in supply it goes off,” Kachikwu declared.
On his part, the National President of NUPENG, Igwe Achese said that the union was satisfied with deliberations at the meeting, adding that: “We had a successful meeting, quite interesting in terms of the emotional attachment of Mr. President on the issue of oil and gas sector and the challenges we are facing as a nation.
“We tabled the issue of fuel scarcity, the quick passage of the PIB and to see how the sector will bounce back economically and to make Nigerians smile again.
“Clearly we talked more on the corruption on the oil and gas sector, products allocations; Mr. President has assured that both NUPENG and PENGASSAN will continue to be part of the restructuring that he is going to make to look into these issues and to make sure that scarcity is reversed at our filling stations,” he added.
Also speaking, his PENGASSAN counterpart, Comrade Olabode Francis Johnson said the President was emotionally attached to the oil sector and wanted everything in NNPC to follow due process.
According to him, “We had a very successful meeting with the C-in-C and one of the highlight of the meeting was when he said he created the NNPC and he is emotionally attached to it and that everything that is going to happen in NNPC must follow due process.
“He said he is concern about what Nigerians are going through and he bears their pains and whatever he is going to do he will do it with their support so that Nigerians can enjoy the benefits of NNPC.
“As leaders we are very satisfied with what he said, the commitment and the passion he has shown for the industry. PIB is an executive bill; he said all the legal framework will be addressed so that it will be of benefit of Nigerians. He also showed concern for pipeline vandalism and crude oil theft and we know that will support and collaboration he is going to achieve results,” Johnson stated.
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