ENUGU, Nigeria (VOICE OF NAIJA)- The founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Pinnacle Oil and Gas Limited, Mr Peter Mbah, has blamed ceaseless petroleum products’ scarcity currently rocking the country on inadequate investment in the oil and gas sector.
According to Mbah, the cause of the crisis was a result of a deficit of investment in the downstream sub-sector.
The governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Enugu State spoke after a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
He said his firm, Pinnacle Oil and Gas, has started solving with the inauguration of the largest storage terminal in West Africa in Lagos last year.
He said: “There has been a deficit of the sort of investments Pinnacle has done in the last decades, but what we’re doing right now is to address that stagnation of investments in the downstream oil and gas industry.
“As you know, this is an investment size of about $1 billion. 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 investment in the downstream sub-sector would completely eliminate the sort of scarcity you are witnessing today.”
Mbah expalined why he had come along with the Chairman of Pinnacle Oil and Gas, who is the Emir of Bichi Kingdom in Kano State, Alhaji Nasiru Ado-Bayero, to the Villa, to see the President, saying that it was a visit to express appreciation to Buhari for commissioning the company’s huge facilities at Lekki, Lagos State, in October, last year.
He said the facilities’ activities had lowered costs and improved the distribution of petroleum products to many areas in the country while also easing traffic in the Apapa area of Lagos and had provided valuable job opportunities for many Nigerians.
He continued: “We, Pinnacle Oil and Gas Limited, have come here today 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 and CBM. Those are the offshore facilities we have. Those facilities have the capability to in-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 30 to 32 days to discharge.
“So we have largely come here today to express our gratitude to Mr. President for the honour 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 costs 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.”