President, Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN), Mr Festus Osifo, has attributed the persistent queues in petrol stations across the country to weak and outdated distribution chains.
He stated this at the 2024 PENGASSAN Energy and Labour Summit (PEALS 2024), in Abuja on Thursday.
Osifo said the distribution chain is weak in the downstream sector of the oil and gas industry and insufficient to meet the demands of the country’s large population, which explained why the problem keeps resurfacing.
“There is no country in the world as big as Nigeria, with our population, that relies on a single point of product importation and uses trucks to distribute across the nation,” he said.
Osifo also attributed insufficient supply of fuel across the filling stations in the country to bad roads and flooding, leading to scarcity.
The (PENGASSAN) President called for urgent reforms to address the challenge.
He also called on the government to develop and strengthen the country’s value chain to ensure a more efficient and reliable distribution system.
Osifo noted that without the improvements, the country would continue to face recurring fuel shortages.
He said, other challenges I the sector included, high cost of local production, which according to him, is 15 per cent to 20 per cent higher than in other parts of the world.
He said the high production cost is partly due to the burden of security in the oil and gas companies.
He urged the government to take over the security responsibilities from investors, to, significantly, reduce production costs.
He also called on the government to strengthen laws and sanctions against those involved in oil theft.
Osifo advocated stiffer penalties to deter bad behaviour and encourage integrity within the industry.
