ENUGU – The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is striving to ease the current fuel scarcity in some parts of the country, one of its officials has said.
Its Executive Director in-charge of Operations at the Port Harcourt Refinery, Mr Vitalis Ugochukwu, said during the NNPC Day at the Enugu International Trade Fair on Thursday that the persistent fuel scarcity in the country was political.
Ugochukwu added, however, that some cities in the country had adequate fuel supply.
“The situation is no longer the same in Port Harcourt and some other cities across the country as there have been adequate supply,” he said.
The director said the corporation had ensured that some of the refineries in the country became functional to ease the challenges.
“At the moment, Warri and Kaduna refineries are functioning to inject more products into the Nigerian market.
“The Port Harcourt refinery would have been functioning before now, but for a series of vandalism of the pipelines,” he said.
Ugochukwu regretted that pipelines that supplied crude oil to the Port Harcourt Refinery were frequently under attack by people living on the routes.
He said the Port Harcourt Refinery had the capacity to work with 150,000 barrels of crude oil per day, but that supplies were limited due to the menace.
“From March 2013, we have not had any crude oil supply due to vandalism and that is why the government had resorted to supply products to us through the marines,” he said.
He said the insinuations that the nation’s refineries were not working was not true, adding that the NNPC had been on top of the situation. (NAN)
