The man­age­ment of State-owned Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny (NP) is to­day deny­ing re­ports that sup­plies of diesel, pre­mi­um un­lead­ed and su­per un­lead­ed gaso­lene are dan­ger­ous­ly low at fill­ing sta­tions.This arose af­ter em­ploy­ees at the NP plant downed tools on Fri­day in protest at the com­pa­ny's Sea Lots com­pound. The sit­u­a­tion had led to mo­torists en­gag­ing in pan­ic buy­ing on Fri­day and yes­ter­day.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease yes­ter­day, up to 2.30 pm the com­pa­ny had al­ready dis­patched 80 loads across the coun­try to meet con­sumer de­mand, quelling ru­mours of any short sup­ply.This was al­so sup­port­ed by Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan in a re­lease yes­ter­day.NP, she said, had ac­ti­vat­ed its con­tin­gency plan to en­sure full op­er­a­tions. "NP's con­tin­gency plan has been ful­ly ac­ti­vat­ed and by mid­night tonight (Sat­ur­day), the com­pa­ny would have dis­trib­uted over 140 loads of fu­el.

In ad­di­tion, UNIPET trucks have been and will con­tin­ue to fill from the Bond at Pointe-a-Pierre."The ques­tion of a need to pan­ic-buy sim­ply does not arise," the Min­is­ter added.On re­ports that work­ers were locked out of the com­pa­ny ear­ly yes­ter­day, the Min­is­ter stat­ed: "On the is­sue of work­ers be­ing locked out, I am ad­vised by NP that no such in­ci­dent took place."NP, in a re­lease, cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly de­nied OW­TU's claim.