Petroleum Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke yesterday blamed the persistent long queues at petrol stations on the industrial action by unions in the petroleum sector protesting sack of workers by Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC).

Briefing State House correspondents on the situation, she said her ministry had succeeded in resolving issues affecting fuel supply but the effort has been truncated by fresh industrial action by unions in the sector.

"Initially, the queues came out of the whole fuel subsidy issue and the fact of course that verifications of certain amounts and certain marketers claims were being made very stringently and this had to be done. We cannot eat our cakes and have it. We cannot keep calling out for transparency and accountability and pointing at corruption if we are not prepared to bear some of the hardship that will obviously come when you are trying to clean up a sector.

"The verifications have been done, payments are now being made and like I said the queues are actually beginning to go down," she said.