Nigerian petroleum engineer Chinedu Onyeizu has developed a policy and technology-based solution to the country’s fuel crisis.
According to Vanguard, Onyeizu, who is currently a postgraduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), said that the strategy would require unbundling the downstream sector into 3 strategic modes namely: Downstream-Upstream node, Downstream-Midstream node, and Downstream-Downstream node.
The three-node approach, according to him, is policy-based and would require critical enablers, which include “locating new refineries at operational bases of producing companies; collaborating with International oil companies and indigenous producers to operate the refineries while NNPC (Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation) positions itself as a non-operating partner with oversight functions (and) provides 100 per cent funding for the construction of these refineries…”
The technology component is the user-friendly mobile application ‘Petrol-Solve 1.3’, which will provide “real time monitoring of fuel volumes and for product distribution network management from the point of vessel loading to end point –filling stations," reported the Daily Trust.
Onyeizu said that using this strategy he could solve in 12 months the long-time fuel scarcity problems that have been confronting Nigeria.
He would like to have an audience with Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari and the Minister of State for Petroleum Resource Ibe Kachikwu to further discuss his proposal.
