By Chesa Chesa
A Nigerian oil investor and People’s Democratic Party (PDP) governorship candidate for Enugu State, Peter Mbah has blamed inadequate investments in the downstream sector as the major cause of the perennial fuel scarcity across the country.
Mbah, who is the Chief Executive Officer of Pinnacle Oil and Gas Limited, spoke at the weekend to State House Correspondents shortly after he paid a thank-you visit to President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja. The President had last month commissioned the firm’s massive oil facility in Lagos.
Mbah said that in order to bridge the gap, Pinnacle Oil and Gas has invested $1billion dollars to address the stagnation of investment in the downstream sector.
Asked whether the country would ever get over the intermittent scarcity it witnesses every time, the industrialist said that with the intervention of his company and investments from other Nigerians in the downstream sector, the problem will soon be a thing of the past.
His words: “There has been a deficit arising from the set of investments Pinnacle has done in the last decades. But what we’re doing right now is to address that stagnation of investment in the downstream oil and gas industry.
“This is an investment size of about a billion dollars. So we are expecting to see more of such investments because what the Pinnacle has done is to create some efficiency in the supply and distribution value chain of the downstream sector.
“So, we are indeed expecting that more investments in the downstream sub sector would completely eliminate the sort of scarcity we are witnessing today.”
While stressing his appreciation to the President for accepting to inaugurate the company’s storage terminal adjudged to be the largest storage terminal in West Africa, Mbah also said the offshore intake of the storage terminal is the deepest intake facility in Africa.
According to him, “we, Pinnacle Oil and Gas Limited, have come here to express our profound gratitude and our heartfelt appreciation to Mr. President.
“You will recall that on the 22nd day of October 2022, Mr. President inaugurated our storage terminal adjudged to be the largest storage terminal in West Africa, with offshore intake facilities also adjudged to be the deepest intake facility in the entire Africa, sitting at a water depth of 23 meters.
“So we do have SPM (Single Point Mooring), and CBM (Conventional Buoy Mooring). Those are the offshore facilities we have. Those facilities have the capability to take the largest vessels, you can imagine and discharge over 100 million liters of clean petroleum products within 24 hours.
“This is typically what takes the industry 32 days to discharge. So we have largely come here to express our gratitude to Mr. President, for the honor he gave us in inaugurating this largest facility, which has actually changed the face of the industry, because it has eased as you know, this facility is located at the Lekki free zone, just by the Dangote refinery.
“So what it has done, it has eased the congestion and the gridlock we have at the Apapa area in Lagos. It has also reduced the cost of supply and delivery of petroleum products in different parts of the country. It has also provided jobs for teeming unemployed Nigerians. So this is why we thought it necessary to come and say thank you to Mr. President.”
