The Management of the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) has Friday met in Abuja to strategise on measures that would ensure stability of the oil sector.
A source at the meeting told newsmen in Abuja on Friday that the session attended by top management staff of the agency across the country deliberated on DPR’s operations in 2014.
The source said that issues at the meeting were mainly on ways to improve on the activities of the agency to meet the expectation of Nigerians.
The agency, known among close watchers of oil sector and the “police of oil industry”, according to the source, was worried over the resurgence of queues of vehicles at the fuel stations in parts of the country.
“The meeting deliberated extensively on how to ensure that there are no hiccups in petroleum products distribution network and to check activities of unscrupulous marketers,” it said.
While expressing delight at the way the agency addressed the challenge through clamp down on filling stations to ensure that they did not sell above pump price, the source said “we did so because we knew they all had products”.
The source also disclosed that the issue of pipeline vandalism, which almost paralysed operations of the sector in the South-South and South-West areas recently was discussed.
It would be recalled that vandals carried out several attacks on major oil and gas pipelines including the 73 ruptured points on Mosimi-Ijegun-Atlas Cove route, Escravos-Lagos gas network and at Akute, Lagos and Ogere, in Ogun.
Efforts to speak with the Public Relations Officer of the agency on outcome of the meeting failed but a top official who attended the meeting confirmed that strategies for stability in the oil sector were enunciated.
The official, who pleaded anonymity, said that DPR management had braced up to the challenges of reforms in the oil industry, “especially with the expected passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill by the National Assembly.”

From Left: General Manager, Sokoto Investment Company Limited, Malam Usman Ahmad; Managing Director, The Infrastructure Bank, Mr Kunle Oyinloye; acting Managing Director, Ebonyi Investment Limited, Mrs Esther Ajaero and Executive Director, The Infrastructure Bank, Mr Taiwo Dauda, during the investiture of Mr Oyinloye as the new Chairman of Association of Nigeria Development Finance Institution in Lagos last Thursday.