Executive Secretary of the Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria [MOMAN], Obafemi Lawore, who decried the scarcity of the product in Lagos at the weekend, said kerosene is not being brought to the jetties of the marketers in recent time.
He explained that the reason why it is difficult to bring in Dual Purpose Kerosene is because the product comes in aviation kerosene.
He said: “’The world over, nobody produces household kerosene. Kerosene produced comes in the form of Aviation Turbine Kerosene[ATK],and it is very limited. So if you import, you are importing it at ATK price and government says you should sell at N50.Mind you, it is not fractured under the Petroleum Support Fund[PSF],except only NNPC that gets a reimbursement under the PSF.
On the lingering crisis between the Petroleum Product Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPRA)and some marketers over oil import allocation, Olawore said the crisis arose because the agency, to some extent, did not adhere strictly to set rules laid down by stakeholders committee constituted recently to look into the issue of fuel shortages.
The MOMAN scribe who spoke on strategic oil reserve base for the country, explained that malfunctioning refineries, depots and vandalized pipelines would make it extremely difficult for Nigeria to realize such a reserve.
‘’I believe that you can only talk of national reserve when all the facilities are okay. The refineries are working .The pipelines are okay and the depots also have tanks that are okay .When these three facilities are okay, then you will start building up stock’’.
