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The Federal Government has said that it will meet the conditions set by
labour unions before the deregulation of the downstream oil sector.
The Minister of State for Petroleum, Mr. Odein Ajumogobia, said this
o while monitoring fuel distribution at the Nigerian National Petroleum
Corporation depot in Suleja, Niger State. He said, “Some of the
issues that the unions have raised as preconditions for deregulation
are being addressed. “The refineries are being addressed; we are
working on the pipelines, repairing them. It is a continuous challenge.”
Ajumogobia added, “As we fix one pipeline and move to the next one, you
get a report that the pipeline we just repaired has been vandalised
again. “So security agents are being engaged to monitor the
pipelines and try to secure them. These pipelines belong to all of us,
they are assets of Nigerians, so we must protect them.”
The minister also said that trackers would henceforth be installed on
all the trucks lifting products based on suspicions that tanker drivers
contributed to the prolonged fuel scarcity by diverting products.
Ajumogobia announced this after inspecting the Suleja depot, where he
learnt that 101 trucks laden with products were dispatched to Abuja by
8am. However, by noon, many of the petrol stations in Abuja,
which is barely one hour drive from Suleja, were yet to get products,
raising fears that some of the petroleum tankers had been diverted to
other states where petrol is sold for about N90 per litre.
Ajumogobia said, “Fixing trackers are inevitable especially as Nigeria
tries to follow international best practice. A tracker is simply a
monitoring device. “It is in the interest of the drivers, for
their owners and operators to know where the tankers are at any
particular time, if they break down in the middle of nowhere, somebody
will know that they have broken down. It is in their own interest, even
for their own security.”
The minister admitted that government could not police every petroleum
truck without the aid of trackers and appealed to the leadership of the
Petroleum Tanker Drivers to get their members to do what is right. “If
a truck has been designated to a particular servie station in Abuja,
then they should go to the stations. It is for the union to discipline
their members who fail to carry out directives,” he said.
The minister reiterated that there was enough supply, enough fuel in
the country, but that distribution bottlenecks created problems.
PetrolWorld 281209
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