The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) has been asked to sustain the 450 million litres of petrol it supplies weekly to address fuel scarcity.
The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Sylva, disclosed this in a statement on Tuesday.
It’s over two weeks since President Muhammadu Buhari and Sylva set up a 14-man committee that has yet to sit amid the biting fuel scarcity and the significant price hike.
Sylva also warned of consequences for anyone that exploited or further caused untold hardship to the ordinary Nigerians by disrupting the fuel supply and distribution chain in the country.
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The statement revealed that NNPCL had maintained 450.92m litres weekly evacuation of petrol to different petrol stations across the country.
During a tour of selected petrol stations in Abuja last Friday, Sylva expressed the government’s satisfaction with the efforts of NNPCL in ensuring fuel availability to the average Nigerian and urged them to keep up the tempo.
He noted that in the last one month, NNPCL had maintained a total weekly evacuation of 450.92m litres, a daily average of 64.42m litres.
The minister further noted that the crisis was due to a fallout of the long years of rot and decadence in the fuel products supply and distribution chain by successive governments, hence that the 14-man committee was to probe the cause and resolve it.
He further said that the Port Harcourt Refinery was at about 65 per cent, Kaduna awarded to Daewo of South Korea and Warri expected to follow soon.
The government through NNPCL also acquired a 20 per cent equity in the Dangote Refinery, embarked on the licensing of modular refineries, and concluded the marginal fields bid rounds, among others, to boost oil production and refining capacity.
