FUEL CRISES UPDATE

NNPC To End Fuel Crisis In 2 Weeks –Kachikwu
THE Minister of State for Pe­troleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, has assured that the short and medium term plans adopted to tackle the embarrassing fuel crisis in the country will yield position re­sults soon.
He said all stakeholders in the sector are working tire­lessly round the clock to en­sure relief is brought to Nige­rians with assurance that the long queues at filling stations and the general product scar­city will end in the next two weeks.
A statement at the weekend by Group General Manager Public Affairs of the NNPC, Garba Deen Mohammed said, “As at 1600hrs of today, one (1) PMS cargo contain­ing 42 million litres has com­pletely discharged, two more PMS cargoes with a com­bined ‘Remaining on Board’ (ROB) of 44 million litres are currently discharging while another PMS cargo contain­ing 44 million litres is berthed and awaiting discharge.
“We have enough prod­ucts lined up to ensure that the supply gap which cre­ated the problem is bridged. In order to ensure effective distribution we are working with Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Ni­geria (IPMAN), oil majors and over 1,000 NNPC staff, nationwide to ensure we overcome the obstacles in the distribution of the products.
While not resorting to excuses we would like to emphasise that this pres­ent management of NNPC and indeed the government inherited huge and compli­cated problems with respect to importation, distribu­tion and pricing of petro­leum products. Nigerians would recall that the sum of N522,258,934,505 meant for payment of fuel subsidy, cov­ering the last quarter of 2014 (October to December) and the entire 2015 was approved by the Senate in December 2015 in order to pay for sub­sidy arrears inherited by this government.
For long term solutions, the NNPC and the govern­ment is working to put in place machineries to ensure that our refineries are fixed and working optimally, while the pipelines which have been under attack for some time now are repaired. The Direct Sale Direct Purchase (DSDP) arrangement for crude would commence in the first week of April and all these coupled with the fact that the Presi­dent has given his support to increase the crude supply to NNPC to ensure local suffi­ciency of products will go a long way to solve the prob­lems in the short and long term.
We wish all Nigerians a happy Easter holiday and as­sure that while we celebrate the Easter, the NNPC will continue to work hard to bring the fuel scarcity to a speedy
Kachikwu had earlier last week announced that Nige­rian may continue to suffer the scarcity till May.
However, he said, the man­agement of the Corporation is committed to ending the scar­city soon.
“Our immediate concern is to make petrol available through the interventions and processes put in place so that the queues will disappear within the next one to two weeks.”
The Sun.