PPPRA pays marketers N300b

Source: The Nation Newspaper Published:Friday, January 22nd, 2010

The Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), has said it paid the major oil marketers over N300 billion between August last year and January, this year, being subsidy for petroleum products the marketers imported into the country.

The Executive Secretary of the PPPRA, Abiodun Ibikunle disclosed this yesterday in Lagos during the agency’s inspection tour of some oil depots including Folawiyo Energy Limited, MRS Energy and Capital Oil and Gas Limited.

Ibikunle noted that despite the over N300 billion disbursed to the marketers, the agency still has an outstanding N27 billion debt to pay the marketers. To ensure that the ugly experience of fuel scarcity of the past six weeks does not continue through the new year, Ibikunle said that government would make efforts to pay marketers their subsidies at the right time from now onwards.

The PPPRA Executive Secretary also told reporters that a meeting was going on at the ministry of finance in Abuja between the finance minister and stakeholders in the financial sector, to allay the growing apprehension among banks over loans granted to fuel importers.

Chairman of the PPPRA, Senator Ahmadu Alli, also noted that the Federal Government is ready to partner private companies to build refineries in Nigeria and called on all the oil firms in the country to take advantage of the on-going reforms in the oil industry to build refineries.

Alli, the former Chairman of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), had on Tuesday lamented the fuel scarcity, that had lingered in the country since December last year, describing it as a national shame. He said the scarcity was an indication that the Federal Government has failed.

Alli, who was recently appointed the Chairman of the Board of Petroleum Product Pricing Regulating Agency (PPPRA), spoke during a tour of the oil storage facilities belonging to the NIPCO Plc, Oando and Mobil in Lagos. He noted that the Federal Government was a failure following its inability to check the fuel scarcity.

"We all know that the government has failed. Unless we get up and refine our products by ourselves we will never be out of this problem of fuel scarcity," he said.

Alli was received by the Tunji Adeniji who represented the Managing Director of the NIPCO Plc. Adeniji said that NIPCO has plan in place to build a refinery in the country, which would be able to refine 100, 000 barrels of crude oil per day.

Alli said that fuel scarcity has rendered the import licences given to marketers useless. "We all know what’s happening in the banking sector, with banks jittery to give loans, marketers who have licences do not have funds to import product," he said.

He expressed confidence that the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) when passed into law will empower the PPPRA to look after the nation’s downstream business and later allow the Agency to solve the scarcity problem.

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), which was responsible for importation of 47 per cent out of the 32 million litres of fuel consumed in Nigeria daily, has been importing 100 per cent the national consumption due to oil marketers’ withdrawal from the importation. NNPC also held downstream stakeholders meeting in Lagos last week to seek lasting solution to the scarcity problem.

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