Victor EzejaChairman of the Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria (MOMAN), Olu Adeosun, has said the ongoing measures being taken by the Federal Government, particularly the removal of subsidy on petrol and foreign exchange reforms, would have a long-term positive impact.
Adeosun, who spoke on Thursday in a Channels Television interview monitored by Prime Business Africa said if the country is able to deal with other fundamental issues holding the country back such as insecurity, the economy would improve significantly and Nigerians would rejoice in the long run.
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“I believe that in the long-term, the prospects are there; the pain we are going through now over fuel subsidy removal, FX unification, will not last. Hopefully, we would get crude productivity up, deal with the issue of insecurity and other big fundamental issues that are holding Nigeria back,” the MOMAN chairman said.
On roles the marketers are playing towards cushioning the effect of subsidy removal on the citizens, he said stakeholders in the oil and gas industry are exploring all options to bring down the cost of petrol in the country.
He said that with the deregulation of the downstream sector having set in as a result of the subsidy removal, there will be healthy competition which will be to the benefit of Nigerians.
He said the reality is that the price of petrol could go up and come down, but in the free-market economy, which the market has turned into today, marketers would try to outsmart one another in terms of price to gain more customers and have high turnover, all to the benefit of consumers.
On what went wrong while the subsidy regime lasted Adeosun acknowledged that petrol products had been smuggled across borders in the past, adding that the consumption numbers have also been higher than they ought to be.
He said that the ultimate solution to oil supply in the country is setting up local refineries to avoid relying on imports.
He emphasized that there is a need for a multi-faceted approach to addressing the challenges created by subsidy removal, revealing that some of them are already investing in Compressed Natural Gas and renewable energy sources like solar as an alternative to fuel.
$5bn FLNG Project Commendable
The MOMAN chairman also commended the $5 billion Floating Liquefied Natural Gas (FLNG) project undertaken by an indigenous firm, UTM Offshore Limited, in collaboration with three technical partners – Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) UK; Japan Gas Corporation (JGC), Japan and Technip Energies Limited, France.
The trio recently signed an agreement for the commencement of the Front-End Engineering Design of the FLNG facility, the first in the country.
A delegation of investors in the project met with President Bola Tinubu on Wednesday at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, where the president expressed his support for the project.
Leader of the delegation and Group Managing Director of UTM FLNG, Julius Rone, revealed to correspondents that the floating LNG is being implemented with a $5 billion loan from AFRIEXIM Bank.
The project comes at a time when talks about energy transition have taken centre stage, coupled with the energy crises in the country created by the subsidy removal that made the utilization of gas a viable option.
Rone noted that the project will help to boost the national economy by producing 1.5 million tonnes of Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) annually for export and 300,000 LPG metric tonnes for the domestic market.
He added that the objective is to lower and stabilise prices of gas, while creating thousands of jobs and investment opportunities in Nigeria, adding that the project has the capacity to provide 7,000 jobs for Nigerians.
The project, according to him, is expected to come on stream in the first quarter of 2026.
Victor Ezeja is a passionate journalist with six years of experience writing on economy, politics and energy. He holds a Masters degree in Mass Communication.
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