The recent attacks by suspected militants of oil facilities in the Niger Delta has taken a huge toll on the nation’s fuel supply chain as the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, on Wednesday announced the operational shutdown of the Port Harcourt and Kaduna Refineries owing to crude supply challenges arising from recent attacks on vital crude oil pipelines.

A statement by the Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division of the NNPC, Ohi Alegbe, said that the plants were shut simultaneously on Sunday after the Bonny – Okrika crude supply line to the Port Harcourt Refinery and the Escravos-Warri crude supply line to the Kaduna Refinery suffered breaches. The NNPC stated that before the closure, the Port Harcourt Refinery was recording a daily PMS yield of over 4.1 million litres while Kaduna Refinery was posting a daily petrol production of about 1.3 million litres.

The statement noted that the Warri Refining and Petrochemicals Company is still on stream and producing a little above 1.4 million Litres of petrol per day. The Corporation however assured Nigerians that it had put in place strategies to guarantee unimpeded country-wide availability of petroleum products.

“In response to the unexpected setback, we have activated comprehensive remedial measures to sustain the prevailing stability in the supply and distribution of petroleum products across the country,” the NNPC said.