The minister of finance budget and international planning Mrs zainab Ahmed has insisted that the federal government will commence a phased removal of petrol subsidy from June next year noting that the provisions for the removal of subsidy had already been made in the 2023-2025 medium-term plan.
The Minister’s comments followed an earlier advisory from the World Bank Country director for Nigeria Mr Shubham Chaudhuri who maintains the subsidy remains the white elephant contributing to Nigeria’s macroeconomic woes.
Meanwhile, the Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPCL maintains that crude oil theft continues to take a severe toll on its performance saying that this is in addition to security challenges
that hinder oil production in some terminals.
In his reaction, Energy Lawyer/Analyst Ayodele Oni said this is positive news as long as it can be sustained as government continues to do what it’s been doing.
According to him, one of those things is working with indigenous people in those areas who understand the terrain
He said beyond that the private sector has been working hard to have alternative arrangements for movement of its crude from production point to export terminal.
Mr Oni noted that a number of these factors have come together to ensure that we can produce much more than we’ve been producing in a while.
Speaking on how to better secure our pipelines, Mr Oni said no economic activity can be isolated without taking into consideration the entire macroeconomic situations and indices you find in a country.
According to Mr Oni, if you have a lot a large population not working, and underemployed then criminality will be the order of
the day.
Mr Oni who compared the last three administrations, added that in terms of cfrude oil production and level of poverty, this has been the highest level of poverty and the lowest level of production, and it’s been difficult meeting our quota.
Speaking further, Mr Oni said one of the things the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited has done recently is trying to use SCADA, supervisory control and data acquisition, some technology that can remotely monitor pipelines infrastructure facilities and others.
He noted that part of the challenges with pipeline vandalism is that when people are caught, the purnishment they are given is not commensurate to the offence.
“We have laws but it is the proper implementation of it that is the problem.
