You pull up to the gas
station only to find it closed and padlocks on the pumps. People have been
rioting in the streets because cheap gas is gone. By the bleak look of
this now abandoned station it isn't going to reopen any time soon. Even though the
country has massive oil deposits exported daily, you can't buy gasoline!
RIOTS IN THE STREET
The local politicos are
helpless. The game is being played by international oil cartels, speculators on
the New York Stock Exchange and your government trying to keep the boat afloat.
The national fuel subsidy recently yanked from the marketplace that
precipitated the riots has allowed the price of gasoline to rocket skyward.
This insensitivity to the working class budgets of your countrymen has lead to
walkouts and strikes. The president belatedly promises to reinstate the subsidy
as soon as the political machine can make it work.
A QUARTER OF THE BUDGET
TO GASOLINE
The rationale behind the
fuel subsidy was to make gasoline affordable to the growing population living in
poverty. But the subsidy for cheap fuel slowly ate the government budget; it
took more than agricultural spending, more than infrastructure for which the
money is now needed. The new president had to rescind the subsidy.
The shock of gasoline
prices tripling set off demonstrations that turned to riots. Church bombings
last Christmas Day left 49 people dead and scores wounded. The black market for
gasoline is thriving and comes and goes through the porous borders of the
country.
For now, your problem is
to get to an open gas station that has short enough lines that you can get to
the pump before your meager supply vanishes. There should be one just down the
street, shouldn't there? But this isn't the United States, it's Nigeria in
February of 2012. A sigh of relief or an unease about staring your fuelture™ in
the face?
A SUPPLIER WITHOUT SUPPLY
Nigeria produces and
exports 3 million barrels of oil per day, but its own citizens have to struggle
for enough gasoline to power their cars and their generators. Little
electricity is available without it. With holdings larger than the U.S. and
Mexico combined, Nigeria is a "fragile" nation, according to a recent
World Bank report. Because their refineries often do not operate, the country
has to import its own fuel while sending its raw crude out to other countries
to be refined. Though its "Bonnie" sweet crude is of excellent and
desirable quality, working out the production and delivery of it has been
problematical from the beginning.
NOT THE TRUTH ABOUT YOUR FUELTURE™?
Hopefully, most people
will be able to roll up to a station that is open, reputable and has a
consistent supply, even if the price of gasoline goes as high as $7.80 as it
has recently in France. The supply is there, just phenomenally expensive.
This scenario is not yet
playing at a pump near you, but without careful management, it could.