IOCs offer oil marketers forex for fuel import

Oil marketers in the country who have been facing the challenge of getting forex to meet their allocation for importation of PMS (petrol) now have a breather.

According to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, a number of international oil companies, IOCs, in the upstream oil and gas sector have agreed to provide foreign exchange for them to import the product.

This was made known by Chief Operations Officer, in charge of Downstream at the NNPC, Mr. Henry Ikem-Obih, during a tour of petrol stations in Abuja, Sunday.

Ikem-Obih who identified paucity of foreign exchange (forex) as one of the major reasons for the fuel scarcity witnessed across the country, stated that with the decision, there would be a significant improvement in the second quarter and beyond.

Read also: Kachikwu concedes 58.27% PMS import to marketers

He also revelaed, that before the end of April, all refineries in the country would resume production and begin to contribute positively to improving the fuel scarcity currently facing the country.

According to him, “They will help provide foreign exchange for them to import and meet their Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency, PPPRA, allocations. Through the CBN, NNPC would support importation of fuel in the second quarter.

“These oil companies also would work with us, including the CBN. These combined efforts, we hope, would enable us meet a 100 per cent of import requirement for the second quarter.”

On the refineries, he said  “Most of the work that is being done at the refineries is on site, just getting them to start up and start cracking, so that they too should start contributing to the amount of fuel we have to distribute across Nigeria.

“It is our goal to ensure that within the month of April, we will have some local refining contributing to the amount of fuel we have to distribute across the country.”

 

 

 

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