The Federal Government has reassured Nigerians on the availability of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), popularly called petrol.

The Minister of Petroleum Resources (Oil), Heineken Lokpobiri, gave the assurance after a meeting with industry players in Abuja. He maintained that the federal government was more interested in the availability of petrol at the right quantity while ensuring adherence to quality control.

Lokpobiri argued that the price of petrol was beyond the control of Nigeria as product pricing is subjected to the vagaries of the international oil market.

According to him, deregulation has offered Nigerians the opportunity to patronise any filling station of their choice.

“During the last Christmas celebration, I was in Bayelsa. I went round the different filling stations. Some filling stations were selling for N1020 per litre, others at N990 and N1050, respectively.

"What the government is more concerned about is quality control and product availability. Once the product is of the right quality and measurement, then the industry is on the right path. If you are buying 10 litres of petrol, let it be that you are not cheated because that is where we always have issues.

"Once there is competition, people will have a choice and that is why you do not see queues anymore. If I like, I can enter the one that sells for N1050 per litre, and if  I like,  I can enter the one that sells less. That is the real essence of deregulation. So, in a deregulated market, nobody can tell you that prices will come down or it will not come down.”

In his response to the challenges affecting the sector, especially the multiplicity of taxes, Lokpobiri said part of the challenges the sector had when it came on board was to see how it can ramp up oil which, he said is already yielding results.

“Though we are not where we want to be, we are already getting there. Another challenge was the availability of products. Where you see queues, prices are likely to go up. Those were the issues that we addressed.

Another challenge we are trying to address is policy conflict whenever one agency is making a policy that would affect another agency. “Nigeria has so many taxes and levies amounting to over , 271, which is the highest in the world. These are issues we want to sit down and address. So, there will always be challenges. Life itself is a challenge.”

Chairman, Petroleum Technology Association of Nigeria, (PETAN), Mr. Wole Ogunsanya explained that the meeting was to support the government in achieving the mandate of President Bola Tinubu.

“We are here to support the Minister in his drive to make the oil and gas industry sustainable for this country. And what we have told him, we are writing it as a position paper, especially on how we sustain our industry. A lot of Nigerians do not understand this because not all of us are in oil and gas industry.

"If you go to the Middle East, they have policies where the volume of oil and gas that is produced year in year out is sustained."

He stated that a policy paper should be written to ensure that this boom and bust that we have had in the Nigeria oil and gas industry, we are able to mitigate it. If you look at the price of oil today, it started rising since 2022, but we were struggling to increase production. But thanks to the minister and this administration, for the first time, we are producing at the level that OPEC has allotted to us. Imagine if we had started producing that for two years".