Headline
We Don’t Know Exact Daily Fuel Consumption – FG

…Petrol still smuggled out of this country, marketers say
As a country, we still cannot tell the exact volume of Premium Motor Spirit, popularly called petrol, which we consume on a daily basis, the Federal Government has said.
It stated this just as oil marketers explained that Nigeria’s inability to give a definite figure on the amount of petrol it consumes daily was due to the continued smuggling of PMS out of the country.
The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Sylva, stated that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited had also agreed that Nigeria could not tell the exact amount of petrol consumed across the country daily.
He disclosed this in an interview with his media team, led by his Senior Adviser, Media and Communications, Horatius Egua, which was made available to our correspondent in Abuja on Friday.
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Asked to react to the N3tn fuel subsidy proposal by NNPC, amid concerns about the country’s PMS consumption figure, Sylva replied, “I would have preferred that this question be directed to the NNPC.
“I have made my views known about this issue in the past. NNPC has agreed with me that they are not certain about the exact consumption figure.”
He said the truth was that if the country’s petroleum products were smuggled outside the country, nobody could say what volume was involved today, tomorrow or next week, adding that NNPC could not say they know these figures.
“It’s more or less fueling a criminal economy. The NNPC imports the products, and nobody knows the exact destination of the products at the end of the day,” Sylva stated.
He added, “The imported products come to Nigeria, and from there filters out of our borders to neighbouring countries.
“So, as a country, we cannot tell the exact volume of petroleum products that we consume on a daily basis. All we have been doing is to assume the level of consumption over a period and work with that.”
He, however, expressed belief that the NNPC probably had a better answer to this, stressing that “personally, I dont.
“I have said this publicly before that I don’t know the figure. When I assumed office, initially I was told that our daily consumption was 66 million litres.
“Then, when fuel prices increased from N145 to N162, the consumption figure temporarily fell to about 40 something million litres per day, because the arbitrage opportunity reduced,” Sylva stated.
He added, “Then the value of the naira dropped again, and the number went up again to over 60 million litres. I am told the figure sometimes rise to as high as 90 or over 100 million litres. I don’t know how that happens.
“At this rate, I have said if anyone is looking at a criminal enterprise, look no further than the fuel subsidy.”
This, the minister said, was why he had continued to advocate the removal of fuel subsidy from the country’s PMS pricing template and deregulate.
He said the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), had done everything to resolve the issue, including the closure of the country’s borders with neighbouring countries, yet the criminality was not stopped.
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“The truth is that what the President could do was to close the ‘formal’ borders. What about the illegal routes?,” Sylva asked.
On what could be done, the minister said if the subsidy component was taken out through deregulation, smuggling of PMS to neighbouring nations would cease.
“Of course, we need the market from there. But now we are punishing ourselves because every litre we import at our expense will always find its way outside the country,” he stated.
He added, “Now, the government is trying to subsidise our citizens so that our people will at least get the benefit of the subsidy on petroleum products.
“But, now because of how our borders are, it is very difficult. Now, we are inadvertently subsidising the whole of Africa. This is the thing we cannot handle.”
Also speaking on the matter, the Executive Secretary of the Major Oil Marketers of Nigeria, Clement Isong, told our correspondent that the cheap fuel in the country had remained an incentive to smugglers.
He said, “The higher the price (of petrol) is outside the country and you see prices where they are in the country, the natural response is that normal people such as farmers, okada drivers, transporters, etc, will leave their jobs to go and sell petrol.
“This is because of the mark-up. This is why, particularly in Abuja, you see many people carrying jerrycans of fuel selling them on major roads. This also plays along our borders.
“For as long as the international price continues to rise and we keep our own prices where they are, what will happen is that those countries will suck the products out of Nigeria and you simply will not find the product in Nigeria.”
Isong added, “If you go to those countries, the marketers there will tell you that they are unable to sell because of the product coming from Nigeria is killing their market. This happens in all the countries around Nigeria.”
He stated that the normal supply chain volumes would continue to go down because the products were leaving Nigeria, describing those smuggling out PMS as ordinary everyday citizens.
“This is because they simply make more money buying from here at N162-N165/litre and going across the border to sell at N500/litre. It is more money for them and it is simply the law of economics, called arbitrage, which is a market distortion,” Isong stated.
He added, “And it is what the subsidy on petrol does on Nigeria, a market distortion. Something is worth N500 and you’re selling at N200. Now where you’re supposed to find it at N200 you will not see it because it has moved to where the actual value of N500 is.
“This can also contribute to the scarcity we see in parts of Nigeria. That is why NNPC if it is meant to normally supply 60 million litres per day, for it to keep queues out of filling stations, it will have to increase its supply to 90 to 100 million litres. That’s the problem.”
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The MOMAN official said Nigeria must wean itself of fuel subsidy, “because we are killing both our present and future.
“We simply cannot afford it. We are borrowing money for it.”
PUNCH.
Headline
Mosquitoes Discovered In Iceland For First Time

Mosquitoes have been discovered in Iceland in a first for the island nation, which has long been one of the world’s mosquito-free places, a researcher told AFP Monday.
Three Culiseta annulata mosquitoes, two females and one male, were sighted around 30 kilometres (20 miles) north of the capital Reykjavik, according to Matthias Alfredsson, an entomologist at the Natural Science Institute of Iceland.
“They were all collected from wine ropes… aimed at attracting moths,” the researcher said in an email, referring to a method of adding sugar to heated wine and dipping ropes or strips of fabric into the solution, which are then hung outside to entice the sweet-toothed insects.
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Along with Antarctica, Iceland has long been one of the few places on earth without a mosquito population.
“It is the first record of mosquitoes occurring in the natural environment in Iceland. A single Aedes nigripes specimen (arctic mosquito species) was collected many years ago from an airplane at Keflavik airport,” Alfredsson said, adding that “unfortunately, that specimen is lost”.
Their presence could “indicate a recent introduction to the country, possibly via ships or containers”, he said, but further monitoring in spring would be necessary to determine their further spread.
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Rising temperatures, longer summers, and milder winters, all brought on by climate change, create a more favourable environment for mosquitoes to thrive.
But Alfredsson did not believe that a warmer climate explained the discovery.
The species “appears to be well adapted to colder climates”, which “allows them to withstand long, harsh winters when temperatures drop below freezing”, he said.
He added that its “diverse breeding habitats… further enhances its ability to persist in Iceland’s challenging environment”.
AFP
Headline
Trump Urged Ukraine To Give Up Land In Peace Deal Talks — Official

United State President Donald Trump pressured Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky to give up the eastern Donbas region in exchange for peace during “tense” talks last Friday in Washington, a senior Ukrainian official told AFP.
The source added that the talks with Trump were “not easy”, and that diplomatic efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine war felt like they were being “dragged out” and “going in circles”.
Zelensky met Trump at the White House last week, hoping to capitalise on the US leader’s growing frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s reluctance to accept a ceasefire.
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But he instead left empty-handed after Trump — who spoke with Putin the day before — denied his request for long-range Tomahawk missiles and pressured him into making a deal.
When asked if Trump urged Zelensky to pull out of land Ukraine still controlled — one of Putin’s key demands — the Ukrainian official told AFP: “Yes, that’s true.”
Following his meeting with Zelensky, Trump said on social media that their talks were “very interesting and cordial, but I told him, as I likewise strongly suggested to President Putin, that it is time to stop the killing and make a DEAL!”
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Trump promised to end Russia’s three-and-a-half-year invasion within “24 hours” of his inauguration in January, but has failed to extract any concessions from Putin.
His position on the war has repeatedly shifted following his conversations with both Putin and Zelensky.
AFP
Headline
Voters In Turkish Cyprus Reject Erdogan-backed Leader In Presidential Election

The breakaway territory of northern Cyprus has voted overwhelmingly to replace its outgoing leader, who had the backing of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, election officials said Sunday.
Almost 63 per cent of voters in the territory, whose claim to statehood is recognised only by Turkey, backed former prime minister Tufan Erhurman as next president at the expense of Turkey’s pick, Ersin Tatar, who polled 35 per cent.
Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when a Turkish invasion following a coup in Nicosia backed by Greece’s then-military junta eventually led to the creation of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in 1983.
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The internationally recognised Republic of Cyprus, a member of the European Union, controls the island’s majority Greek Cypriot south.
While Tatar has toed the Turkish line of two separate states on Cyprus, Erhurman has indicated he favours a federal state that would include both sides of the island.
Erhurman said there were no losers in the election and that “the Turkish Cypriot people have won together”.
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“I will exercise my responsibilities, notably in terms of foreign policy, in consultation with the Republic of Turkey,” he said, trying to soothe concerns from Ankara that he may try to break away.
Erdogan congratulated Erhurman in a post on social media, adding that Turkey would “continue to defend the rights and sovereign interests” of the breakaway territory.
The last major round of peace talks to negotiate a settlement to the island’s divided status collapsed in Switzerland in 2017.
The leaders of both sides met in July at the UN headquarters in New York for talks that were hailed as “constructive” by UN chief Antonio Guterres.
AFP
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