 Welcome back to Silk Plus Politics. Now, the senior special assistant to the president of the Republic Affairs, Adruin Galali, has said, more refineries in Nigeria will not reduce petrol prices. The presidential spokesperson asked Nigerians to disregard the myth that the more refineries in Nigeria would translate to cheaper fuel price. Now, Adruin also recalls that the federal government has said that a packet refinery will be revitalized in December this year. Joining us to discuss this is Fine Face Dunaminé and joining us later will be Mick Agoule, both of them are experts in the oil and gas sector. Fine Face is the National Facilitator Project with Artisanal Crude Oil Refineries and Modular Refineries in the Niger Delta. So good to have you join us, Fine Face. Thank you, Mary-Anne. Good evening, everyone. Nice to be here once again. Fine Face, every time I have you here on the show is obviously to talk about the situation that we're facing in our oil and gas sector and it seems to be an unending crisis. In fact, it's differently as the days go by, the days go by a better part. Now, we all saw that press briefing by Adruin Galali where he emphatically said he's not saying that we should not, you know, revive the refineries, but he's saying it's not going to change anything. And so the average person is saying, so why are we clamoring for the refineries to be revived? I think my brother, you know, Adruin Galali, the president's assailant is not correct, he's not an expert in the field, but even if you are not an expert in a field, you should be able to know that if you have allowed the four-point price to be detected by the process of demand and supply, that the moment supply exceeds demand, the price is going to drop and the moment supply, I mean, the demand exceeds, you know, supply, the price is going to drop and when supply exceeds demand, the price is going to be moving in that direction. So if he says that the more refineries will not lead to reduction in the four-point price, then he's not correct at all. I believe that some persons within the presidential code would have corrected him by now because what are we talking about here? Why is the four-point price high? It is high because the demand has exceeded what is being supplied. It is high because the product is being imported and USD is being used at higher rates to import this. It is high because we do not have sufficient. If we are producing in this country, the four refineries are on board, Kaduna Wari and the two-portacol, then the dangota refinery comes on stream, the various private modular refineries already ongoing. They come on stream and you have modular refineries provided for you to are involved in artisanal food oil refining. And again, we are also proposing the one we call the presidential artisanal food oil refineries that legalizes artisanal refineries. If all these industries are producing, you will have as much PMS, as much AGO, as much DBK in the country, as much as you have bottled water. It's going to be as common as that. So the moment you have this product plushing everywhere, you will see that competition will be introduced. And that competition is going to lead to the process of the price of the product crashing. It will crash to the extent that we may go back to even having this product sold below 350 naira per litre. So it is very clear, even the blind can even see and the deaf can even hear that when you say that we are producing from every corner of the country that this is going to drop. Remember, even the dangota refinery promise to produce the quantity that the country will use and even have about 250, you know, a bar of export. So if we have all these things on board, it's going to crash the price of the product. Remember that now, as we speak, there is the glamour and new information across the country that the price may increase again from what we currently have. What is the reason why this is being given? The reason is because the Naira dollar relationship are not very cordial. They are buying a dollar at a higher rate. For that reason, it's also going to reflect on the cost of the product. So you can imagine that this production was being done in the country. People are buying crude oil in Naira. People are selling the refined product in Naira. Nobody has to go for dollar. You will see that our value of the currency we also appreciate and we are going to have the product for everybody to use at the cheap rates. It's interesting. Again, I'm going back to a jury's press conference or media party. I'm thinking to myself, why exactly would a presidential spokesperson come up with that particular line without doing his homework? Again, if you say that he's wrong, could this also be a tactic to dissuade our minds just in case the refineries are not often working as at when they should be or as at the time that the government has promised us. Now, Dan Getty Refinery had told us July, at least the end of July, we're in the middle of August. Nothing's yet to come of it. Is this a game of ping-pong for the government and of course us? To a very large extent, I think he misrepresented the government of his principle. He misrepresented the governments of President Pola Ahmed Tinobu by saying that the coming on stream of the refineries would not refuse price because already he has also used his OMA to say that there is not going to be any increase in the foreign price again from what we currently have. And that is not also correct that there is not going to be increase because the moment we exhaust what we are currently imported into the country, there is the tendency that we are going to import more product. And if you are going back to the market to buy the product and bring into the country and by the time you get to the market because of the dollar exchange rate you have used to what you have used to buy the dollar and you are bought at a higher price back to the country. You have to recover how much you have added. That means that government cannot even be able to control how much the price is going to be the moment the marketers go back to import this product into the market. But if he is telling us that Mr. President is not also going to ensure that allow foreign price to increase again, then in a way I will say that the government is in-house discussing and planning to introduce subsidy from the backdoor. They are trying to introduce foreign subsidy from the backdoor because now if currently we have the dollar exchanging about 710 Naira for instance to a dollar and marketers have told you that if they go back to the market with the current price and is going to increase to about 750 Naira or 720 Naira per litre of foreign, maybe government is trying to look at that difference that is on it. You know our current pump price now is 617 Naira and when they go back to the market and maybe like 20 Naira comes on board again then government is secretly through the backdoor pay that 20 Naira for every Nigeria so that the impact is not already felt because since Mr. President came into office and he made a statement on his inaugural day that foreign subsidy is gone. A lot of things have happened that if not that Nigerians are no side a lot of Nigerians are kind of a part to actions of protest the country would have been shot down today and it would have been difficult for him to even be able to rule the country because already we know what happened in 2012 during the foreign subsidy removal even increment in foreign price whereby we have the occupied Nigeria so I think that the presence of spokesman didn't do his homework very very well because even someone that is not knowledgeable in the oil and gas sector will let him know that if we have more production locally being produced at the price it's going to drop even as we have the official price to the effect at 617 Naira per litre you still go to some filling stations you provide 685 Naira you can buy 685 Naira you can buy 591 Naira you can buy 519 Naira so the price is not still stable the reason why you have this instability in price despite the official price at 617 Naira is because there is competition and people want to say I am currently carrying out a research on the impact of foreign subsidy on people consumption style their lifestyle and what is happening in reverse data parts of Nigeria data so I understand how filling stations for attendants and managers have told me that we normally say between 4,000 and 5,000 litres of fuel per day but since subsidy was removed and the price skyrocketed that we are now struggling to say between 800 litres and 1200 litres per day consumption has dropped if you check on the streets of Abuja today the streets of Lagos a lot of people have parked their vehicles they can no longer run it you can see traffic is reducing on the road people are selling others are converting their vehicle into boats you know and other transport me so that they they're not beginning to pay transport if you even look around you every morning you will see people trekking in what I can call a trek at home maybe they are trying to get some certification from Guinness Book of Records as a result of a reduction in the fuel in reduction in the consumption rate because of the high price so if we have production going on from these various areas for refineries are on modular refineries are running artisanal refineries have been legalized and they are refining and you have modular refineries for artisanal refiners in parts of the Niger Delta and parts of Nigeria you are going to see a drastic drop in the four-point price of the PMF to the extent that we are going to buy it below 350 Naira and DPK which is not available today is also going to be available the only source of DPK to the average household in Nigeria today is the artisanal refineries sources that is currently being bombarded by men of the operation that are safe you know with the Nigerian Air Force and fighter jet they are using to bomb that so it's clear that if we produce more the price is going to drop um so Grace we always hear presidents from president Jonathan to former president Bahari and now president Tinnable talking about a tiny group of elites who are you know somewhat in charge of this subsidy you know they maybe look like the moment we take out subsidy all our problems will be gone but then of course it is the beginning of all our problems so again it makes me really wonder looking again at the fact that there's a Heineken Le Corp and then of course the other guy running the oil and gas sector do we really ever see or will we ever see an end to the corruption in the oil and gas sector accountability on one hand and of course fighting down this group or this cabal the corruption in the oil sector unfortunately is not going to end we can only be able to reduce it and the percentage of reduction at the best we can go we only go about 20 percent reduction because Nigeria is a country that its major foreign exchange and is the good oil is oil and as a result of that every focus is on the products crude oil you can also see how instead of the central bank of Nigeria trying to bring up policy that we bring about the stronger Naira and the NNPCL is coming forward to say we are exchanging crude for three billion dollars to stabilize our Naira that is a foreign CBN policy not a private public private companies and policy but then the point here remains that the corruption in the oil and gas sector is going to be there we can only reduce it at best just like we have been able to collectively reduce acts of crude oil thefts in parts of the Niger data today through the tantita you know you know private security contracts operation data safe nscdc Nigerian army and all effort being on ground we have been able to reduce artisanal refinery to an extent but it's still going to continue so the tiny few that are making so much money from this subsidy have only so far been able to you know cut down on the amount they make because subsidy had been removed if you also watch you will see that they are now announcing that we are consuming less than 45 million you know liters of pms per day unlike before when there was subsidy that they tell us that we consume over 60 million per day so you can see but how is also certain that that figure that we're being given is authentic because over the years we've not been able to tell how much we consume a day in this country the reason why we were unable to tell how many the quantity we consume per day in the country before was because subsidy was involved and they have to lie to collect the money from government but now everything is natural the forces of demand and supply is now there the market forces is operating the independent marketers major marketers and all of them are importing and they are selling according to what the how much they bought it and how much they have added as their game so you can now see a kind of quote an okay kind of level playing ground in terms of what people are really buying and what people are actually selling that is why you are seeing a relative good you know figure that can be worked with today if subsidy is reintroduced today you will see that they will tell us again that people are not consuming higher I know quite well that the increments and the hike in the poor price has also reduced the consumption rates of the petrol my pms which also contribute to the drop in the number of you know liters we consume per day but then the point remains that in as much as the forces of demand is in operation we are likely going to see how much and what we get if we really also want to know how many details we consume per day in this country there could be a policy that will make the various filling stations to have a computerized system where each time they bring product into their their their filling station the key in the quantity of product are brought in and at the end of the day what they have sold out also reflects and there could be a system with the with the nmpc or the minister of petrol resources where you have a list of all the marketers all the filling stations the quantity they have what they have sold what is remaining we be reflecting on a system it's a it's a possible thing to do to have that network so that you can actually see what we had yesterday what has been sold what is remaining and what we need going forward that is not something that is a rocket science that they cannot do but it's because we are not really introduced technology into our oil and gas sector it gives us the problem of trying to really be able to know what we are consuming because we are not producing so i think if we can be able to put some of these majors together it will help us to know where we are and where we are going to as a country well i i want to thank you for coming on the show but it would be really interesting if we can have this conversation again because we really need to look at the corruption in the oil and gas sector i mean with the cases of Professor Ponday and several other issues is the NMPC has been christened and rechristened over and over again we still aren't seeing them doing their job as a private company but they still are trading as if they're the ones who are setting the market prices etc so so many questions that need to be answered but fine face i want to say thank you for coming fine face denominator is the national facilitator project with artisanal crude oil refinance for modular refiners in the nider delta thank you so much for coming on the show we appreciate thank you for having me it's an opportunity i appreciate the opportunity thank you all right well i want to thank you all for watching the show tonight thank you for being part of the conversation don't forget you can also follow our conversations previous episodes on youtube plus tv africa and plus tv africa live staff my name is mary annacled enjoy the rest of our programs