The non-availability of petroleum products in most filling stations in Port Harcourt is now a serious concern for commercial bus operators.
Some motorists who spoke to naij.com about the agonies they are subjected to said that the long hours spent queuing at fuel stations is affecting their business. This is even worst as black marketers have taken advantage of the situation to sell petroleum product at exorbitant prices.
Some of the black market petroleum dealers said that they now sell a litre of petrol at one hundred and twenty naira as against the official pump price of N86.50. Meanwhile the Nigerian Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers, Port Harcourt zone has accused the Department of Petroleum Resources ( DPR) in the zone of failing to monitor activities of depot owners and Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria. The NUPENG zonal chairman, Godwin Eruba said the inability of the DPR to do the job by monitoring depot owners who refuse to sell their products described the current fuel scarcity in Rivers state as sabotage. “NUPENG is not on strike and we do not intend be on strike. DPR officials should leave the comfort of their offices and monitor the depot owners who are sabotaging the efforts of the federal government to reduce the pump price of petrol to N86 and N86.50 per litre”
Eruba also advised independent marketers to buy product directly from the NNPC in order to sell at the approved pump price of eighty six naira fifty kobo. He lamented that while Rivers state is the centre of petroleum industry in West Africa, with two refineries and petroleum products depots littered all over the state capital yet the state is persistently experiencing fuel scarcity even when other states have normal supplies. Comrade Eruba partially heaps the blame at the doorsteps of DPR for its inability to carry out monitoring and sanctioning defaulting petroleum products dealers.
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