Fuel scarcity to end tomorrow – Kachikwu

Fuel scarcity to end tomorrow – Kachikwu

Fuel scarcity to end tomorrow – Kachikwu

… pump price to be adjusted in May

By Daniel Adugbo

Minister of State for Petroleum Resources Dr. Ibe Kachikwu yesterday reassured that the lingering fuel scarcity in the country will disappear in forty-eight hours beginning from Abuja and Lagos while long queues across the states will end by the weekend.

Kachikwu gave the assurance as a follow up to an earlier promise he made when he met the Senate Committee on Petroleum Resources (Downstream) saying that the acute scarcity of petrol will ease on or before 7th of April.

The minister who is also the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) also hinted that prices of petroleum products will be readjusted to match current trends by May.

Kachikwu said this at a town hall meeting with the management and staff of the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) in Abuja.

He said, “Hopefully by tomorrow (Wednesday)/Thursday the fuel queues in Abuja should be over, hopefully the same thing will happen to Lagos and thereafter by the weekend we should see Kano, Katsina, Sokoto, Port Harcourt and Warri get off the queues.”

Daily Trust reports that queues within Abuja metropolis have showed signs of abetting within the last 24 hours but the situation outside Abuja and the states remained as before.

The minister, however, stated that his main concern is not to get the present queue to fizzle out but how to prevent it from reoccurring.

“To do that there is so many things we need to do. First is that strategic reserves have not been in this country for the past 20 years, we need to bring back strategic reserves so that we can respond within a matter of hours when there is a shortage in any part of the country.”

“The reality is that in the first three months of doing the price modulation our over recovery basically enabled us to save quite a lot of money and that is going to fund the gap that you see in April but from May obviously the prices would have to be adjusted to match the current trends,” he said.

While urging the PPPRA staff to make a difference individually in their roles, the minister charged them to go out to filling stations and emulate NNPC staff who have been helping direct traffic, fuel tankers and calm motorists.

Earlier in an address, the acting Executive Secretary of the PPPRA Mrs.

Sotonye E. Iyoyo who listed some operational and administrative challenges facing the agency, said the PPPRA is understaffed as field operations are supported by temporary staff while in the approved 2016 budget for the agency, personnel cost was slashed by 6% across board.