TheCable

The Port Harcourt refinery of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has resumed operations three months after it was shut as a result of sabotage to crude pipelines.

The plant closed down alongside that of Kaduna after attacks on the Bonny-Okrika supply line to Port Harcourt and the Escravos-Warri pipeline to Kaduna.

Garba Deen Muhammad, spokesman of the corporation, said Port Harcourt resumed operations last week, and that Kaduna will “open any time soon” to assist in resolving the fuel crisis in the country.

“Port Harcourt has been refining for quite a while now, from last week, between three and five million litres,” he said.

“We expect Kaduna refinery to begin any time soon and we also have vessels discharging fuel and so, all these combined measures will bring down the situation

“When you have this kind of situation, people will naturally get agitated but people are getting calm now because they know the supply gap has now been bridged, and it is a question of distribution now. They are all patient and that was what happened in Lagos. The situation has virtually normalised in Lagos because the motorists cooperated.

“Still, there are some hitches here and there but improvement is what we are counting on and it is what we should be expecting.”

The fuel scarcity has continued one week after the self-set deadline of Ibe Kachikwu, minister of state for petroleum, for queues at filling stations to disappear.