The Federal government has taken steps to reduce road transportation of petroleum products from depots and storage facilities.
The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu made this revelation while speaking with journalists during his inspection tour to the Port Harcourt Refinery Company (PHRC) on Christmas Day in Port Harcourt.
He said the government will focus on the use of pipelines for conveying petroleum products. He emphasized that the efforts will enable the Pipeline and Products Marketing Company (PPMC), a subsidiary of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) convey more products through the pipelines to the hinterlands.
He noted that about 400 trucks filled with petroleum products moved from one part of the country to another to supply petroleum products every day.
He said “It is a combination of many factors: communities, contractors and all sorts, it still makes it expensive but it is better than having to truck them through the roads.”
The Managing Director, Pipeline and Product Marketing Company (PPMC), Mrs. Esther Nnamdi-Ogbue also added that “There is no going back on the use of pipelines” to distribute petroleum products in the country, adding that the introduction of private security outfits in the pipelines’ security arrangement was beginning to yield results.
“Since the beginning of the fuel scarcity, what we’ve done is to manually track every truck leaving any of our depots either in Lagos; Warri, Oghara or Calabar.
“What we have done is to insist that our pipelines must work. We have an initiative with the private sector to help us secure and maintain our pipelines and that has yielded positive results almost immediately, vandals are being caught.”
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