The Federal Executive Council (FEC) adjourned its weekly meeting at the State House in Abuja on Wednesday with the clearance of N2.449 billion for projects in the Ministries of Environment and Petroleum Resources.
Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Environment Minister Muhammed Abdullahi said the Council granted the contract for consultation services and design of the Centre of Excellence for Environmental Restoration with an Integrated Contaminated Soil Management Centre for N449,250,040.50 (VAT inclusive).
According to him, the establishment of the Centre was meant to impact the Ogoni people in terms of job creation and laboratory tests for land remediation efforts on the contaminated site so that it could be easily cultivatable by the people for their fisheries, farming activities, and access to water.
In addition, Timipre Sylva, Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, stated that the FEC approved the award and procurement for the provision of a Conference Hostel Facility in Yenagoa, adjacent to the Nigerian Content Towers, for N22 billion with a two-year completion period to Megastar Technical Construction Company.
When asked about the continuing gasoline lineups in Abuja and other areas of the country, the Minister stated that the situation, particularly in the FCT, would last until petrol was deregulated. He added that the gasoline lineups were not caused by a lack of fuel supply, but rather by petroleum merchants’ unwillingness to sell at the approved retail price.
According to him, there were lineups in Abuja because selling petrol at the suggested N165/litre was unprofitable for marketers, who had determined to capitalize by diverting supplies from the city centre to where they could sell over the authorized retail price.
He said: “If you look at it, there are no queues when you leave Abuja. In most places, only in the Abuja metropolis do you continue to have these queues. So, is it that there is less supply to Abuja than to the rest of the country? It is not so. It is because if you go out of Abuja, they can afford to probably sell at higher prices. And I’m sure a lot of you must be buying at higher prices.
“But within Abuja, because of the watchful eye of the federal government, they cannot sell at those prices. So it’s not a very attractive market for them. I think these are all things that we might have to be dealing with for a while until we’re able to fully deregulate.”
Giving an update on the rehabilitation of the nation’s refineries, Sylva said the Port Harcourt refinery would soon become operational, adding that the Dangote Refinery would commence operation by January next year.
“So, these issues will gradually be resolved and we will get to the point where Nigeria will be fully supplied from in-country refined products,” he assured.
On why Kaduna and Warri Refineries’ workers were still drawing salaries even when they were not producing anything, the Minister explained that most of the workers had been redeployed to other units of the Nigeria National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited with few others doing skeletal services to prevent pilfering at the facilities.
“But I can assure you that most of the workers in the refineries have been redeployed to other parts of NNPC,” he said.
Commenting on the high cost of gas (diesel), the minister said it was so first because the product had been deregulated. He added that: “But of course, you know, the geopolitical tensions in Ukraine and Russia are still on and it’s affecting the global prices of this commodity.
“So, it is not something from Nigeria. It is something that is affecting the global community; everywhere in the world is having the same problem. If you go to the UK, they are still talking about inflation; if you go to America, they’re talking about inflation, because there are issues and it’s all coming from the geopolitical tensions in Ukraine and Russia.
“So, I believe that we will also have our fair share of some of these problems. While we try to see how we can ease the problem here, we’re also looking at how we can bring in additional supply from some stranded volumes that we have.
“So we probably might be able to do something about the gas prices, maybe in the short term, but it is not a subsidized commodity. And that’s why the government cannot do too much about the price of gas”.
