The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Sylva, has explained that maintaining a level of energy security was behind the recent inauguration of Operation White Taskforce. He also stated that there was need to authenticate the actual volume of petroleum products imported and consumed in the country. The minister also noted that as a result of the border closure, daily consumption of petrol had dipped from 60 million litres per day to 52 million litres.
The initiative, which was launched a few days ago at the NNPC Towers in Abuja, is aimed at stemming the tide of smuggling by unscrupulous operators and aid infrastructural development through savings realised from the programme.
Members of the team were drawn from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), Petroleum Equalisation Fund (PEF) as well as the Department of State Security (DSS).
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During the inauguration ceremony, Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Mallam Mele Kyari, charged the team to ensure that they deliver on the national assignment of controlling leakages of petroleum products, especially Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), adding that they have no option but to succeed.
“The selection of ‘Operation White’ team was very thorough and people of great competence and high level of integrity were head-hunted for this national assignment. Today, we are good to go and we will see our transaction end-to-end, as is the case in other countries. We are poised to support the minister to ensure that energy security is guaranteed for our dear country so that our principal, President Muhammadu Buhari, would be proud of us,” Kyari said.
