-By Saidu Abubakar
Amidst reactions, following false report (not by Valuechain), that fuel price will rise to N1,000 per litre, the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) has debunked the report and allayed fears for such.
Head of Public Affairs of the DPR, Paul Osu, in a statement, said that the false report was a misinterpretation of the comments made by the DPR regarding subsidy removal.
Osu said that the publication’s headline was “misleading” as the comments of the Director/Chief Executive Officer, DPR, Sarki Auwalu, were “clearly taken out of context.”
He noted that the “Director specifically created a scenario of price instability of PMS based on the current dollar to naira differentials, to the effect that if Nigeria continues to rely on the importation of PMS without creating alternative energy sources like CNG, LNG, AUTOGAS, etc which will provide price buffers for consumers and ultimately crash the price of PMS, then the product will be subject to prevailing market forces.”
According to DPR spokesman, the Director further re-emphasized that the strategy for alternative energy sources is a cardinal program of the government, which has led to the declaration of the Decade of Gas (DoG) to migrate the Nigerian economy to a gas-based economy by 2030.
Valuechain quotes Osu as saying in the statement that the Department would continue to enable businesses and create opportunities through its downstream focus on Quality, Quantity, Integrity, and Safety (QQIS).