Worried by the acute scarcity of petroleum products in the state, the Rivers State government has petitioned the Minister of Petroleum Resources as well as the Group Managing Director of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).Confirming the development, the state’s commissioner for energy, Mr Ezekeil Amadi, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Port Harcourt last week that the two government officials had given assurances that the issue was receiving urgent attention and that the situation would change.
NAN reports that for two weeks now, residents of Port Harcourt and other towns in the state groaned under fuel scarcity, which made transportation and other services run by fuel suffer serious setbacks.
“Nothing comes in from anywhere to support Port Harcourt. But Port Harcourt being the base supports everywhere, but the minister has assured government that he will reverse the trend,” he said.
The commissioner said the situation had reached an embarrassing point, where the people of the state now suffered untold hardship due to fuel scarcity
Amadi said very soon, government would convene a meeting of all stakeholders in the petroleum industry in the state to seek a way out of the crisis.
“We will summon a meeting of all the stakeholders to tell Governor Chibuike Amaechi the causes of this perennial problem, so that we see how government can address the issues. We are really willing to find a lasting solution to this problem,” he said.
Amadi said that when the refinery project at Ndoni and another tank farm projects were completed, they would beef up the fuel supply situation in the state.
He said that the projects were part of government’s long term plan to boost fuel supply in the state “But on the short term, we will sit down with the stakeholders to plan the way out of the crisis. Our people have suffered a lot and we do not want that situation to continue,” he said
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