Nigeria to Face Acute Fuel Shortage in July - Avuru

Nigerians have been urged to brace up for acute fuel scarcity shortage in July as the federal government claimed it did not have enough money to pay for fuel subsidy, which has hit N2 billion per day, according to Mr. Austin Avuru, managing director, Seplat Petroleum Development Company Plc.

New Telegraph quoted Avuru as saying that: “In three weeks, we will be back to scarcity because we simply don’t have the money to pay for the subsidy.”

Efforts by New Telegraph to get Mr. Ohi Alegbe, group general manager, Group Public Affairs Division of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), to comment on Avuru’s statement failed as he did not pick calls to his phone. Rather, he sent a message, saying “in a meeting.”

Nigeria almost grounded to a halt last month during the country’s worst fuel shortage in a decade due to a dispute between oil product marketers and the immediate past government.

The shortage left service stations closed, aircraft grounded, and businesses unable to operate.

A lack of oil refining capacity means Nigeria subsidises gasoline imports and suffers frequent fuel shortages even though it’s Africa’s biggest crude producer of about two million barrels a day.

President Muhammadu Buhari, who took office on May 29, said this week his government was facing severe financial strain from a treasury that’s “virtually empty” while the nation owes billions of dollars