Payment of oil subsidy to marketers has been temporarily suspended, Minister of Petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu has announced.
He revealed this while speaking with newsmen after a visit to the Kaduna refinery today.
On subsidy and pricing, Mr. Kachikwu said “we will not be fluctuating prices, we will take an average. Today no subsidy, in January we will look at the situation and announce it.”
The Minister also said “the future is that, Nigeria is still going to import fuel in 2016 and beyond.
“Until we begin to get individuals who can co-relocate, we are going to be doing a mixture of local and importation of fuel to meet up demands.
“Best case situation is 25% local and 75% importation. Worse case is what we are experiencing now.
“In the next few weeks, however, queues will disappear in fuel stations,” he stated.
The Minister said Kaduna Refinery will soon attain 2 million litres per day capacity as soon as an FCC unit is fully on stream.
“We need to get it back to re-kit it to work well. We will do that with some level of production going on,” said Mr. Kachikwu.
“Our concern is to have a consistent production and provision of products at all times.”
On privatization, he said “President Muhammadu Buhari has not approved any policy about selling the refineries.”
Kachikwu, also said the nation’s four refineries have been repositioned to produce not less than 10 million litres of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), popularly known as petrol, per day.