Following the backlashes and outcries over his comments that the biting fuel scarcity across parts of the country would linger till May, Nigeria’s Minister of State for Petroleum, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, in a dramatic 180 degrees u-turn on Tuesday, said that the long queues in the country’s petrol stations would disappear on Monday, April 7, 2016.
Kachikwu, who also as the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) disclosed this when he appeared before the Senate committee on Petroleum (Downstream) over the fuel scarcity ravaging the country.
The Minister said: “By 6th or 7th April, the long queues in filing stations would disappear.” He apologized to Nigerians over his statement that the biting fuel scarcity will linger till May.
In a separate development, three maintenance workers were killed during a pipeline explosion repairing pipelines at an oil field operated by the Nigeria Agip Oil Company (NAOC) in Olugboro community in Southern Ijaw local government area of Bayelsa state.
This was confirmed to NAN by the Director-General of the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA), Peter Idabor, saying the incident happened on Sunday.
According to Idabor, a staff of the agency was lucky to escape death, adding that many people sustained injuries. He said the survivor had drawn the attention of oil workers to the breach of safety procedure and left the scene shortly before the incident occurred.
“I received a report of the incident from our staff in Yenagoa office and luckily one of our officers on the team survived. Because of the safety conditions of the place after inspection my staff left the place and he was not affected. I am going to report the matter officially to the minister of environment today.” He said
In July, a similar blast at Agip’s oil field in Azuzuama in Southern Ijaw left 14 people dead.
A regulatory official of the Bayelsa state ministry of environment and NOSDRA and 12 maintenance crew members were among the victims.
