Oscarline Onwuemenyi
21 June 2017, Sweetcrude, Abuja – The House of Representatives has called on the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), to immediately resuscitate its floating stations in coastal communities in the Niger Delta to ease the difficulties in accessing petroleum products and its attendant loss of man hours and revenues by communities occupying shorelines in the region.
The House also urged the NNPC to resume the supply of petroleum products to the stations and ensure that the products are sold at the official rates.
The resolution also targeted the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), urging it to regulate the supply and distribution of products to the floating stations.
The resolutions were made following a motion by Hon. Julius Pondi, wherein he called attention to the need for the immediate resuscitation of the oil distribution facilities said to have been abandoned since 2015.
The lawmaker, while presenting the motion, said: “Petroleum products floating stations established by the NNPC in the riverine coastal communities of the Niger-Delta was the only source of Petroleum products supplies to those communities up till mid 2015.
“For reasons that were not explained to the affected communities, the products floating stations have since stopped functioning, thus making the operators of marine transport services to go in search of fuel in distant places in the hinterlands which consequently result in hike in the cost of marine transportation with its attendant ripple effects of escalation of the prices of goods and services.
“Even when the floating petroleum stations were operational, there was never a time when petrol, diesel and kerosene did not sell at much higher price per litre than the official rates.
“The sudden discontinuation of supplies of petroleum products to the floating stations about two years ago is inflicting hardship and impoverishing the inhabitants of coastal towns and villages from where the very petroleum products that have seized to be delivered by the NNPC to the floating stations are drilled,” he noted.
To this end, the House adopted the resolutions, mandating its Committees on Petroleum Resources (Downstream), and (Upstream) to ensure implementation and report back within three weeks for further legislative action.
