The Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria on Friday said the fuel scarcity in the country is caused by hoarding and diversion by oil marketers who want the price increased.

What happened:

The Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) had recently traced 129,000 litres of petrol diverted to Abuja by marketers.

What PENGASSAN said:

National President, PENGASSAN, Francis Johnson said the association was not involved in the scarcity, stating that it won’t accept an increase in price of fuel.

He said, “And let me say it here that the oil marketers are complaining, they’ve been looking for ways to increase fuel price. But the labour unions, Trade Union Congress, Nigeria Labour Congress, Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers and PENGASSAN are the ones who still fight and say to the marketers that they can’t do that. All of the marketers, IPMAN, DAPPMA, MOMAN, etc, have been agitating for petrol price increase.

“They give you so many reasons, they say dollar is not accessible, they say this, they say that, but we tell them ‘no’, you can’t do that. And so subtle hoarding begins to take place, they start looking for ways to force the government to increase price. That is the game.”

He added, “Like I told you earlier, left to the marketers, PMS will be selling at N500 per litre because they are there to make profits.

“They say they don’t have access to crude oil, they lack access to dollars and that it is only the NNPC that is importing. We said go and import, but they said if they must do that, fuel should be increased to N170 per litre.”