Fuel Scarcity Will End By Thursday April 7- Kachikwu Assures

BEVERLY HILLS, March 29, (THEWILL) – The Minister of State for Petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu on Tuesday apologized to Nigerians over his earlier statement that long queues across filing stations will continue untill May, stressing that fuel scarcity will be over by next week Thursday.

The Group Managing Director of NNPC made this disclosure when he appeared before the Senate committee on Petroleum (Downstream) who summoned him to explain the biting fuel scarcity ravaging the country.

Apologizing to Nigerians over his earlier statement on fuel scarcity, Kachikwu said, “By 6th or 7th April, the long queues in filing stations would disappear,” stressing that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, was working round the Clock to bring the situation under control.

He described the present fuel crisis as an unfortunate scenario which pained the NNPC, but stressed that pipeline vandalism was a major cause of fuel shortages across the nation, which he said has affected production capacity thereby making it difficult to meet up with consumer’s demands.

Kachikwu added that “the second reason behind this crisis was fuel marketers' inability to pump fuel because they could no longer raise letters of credit from banks to that effect.”