Mr Mele Kyari, the Group Managing Director (GMD) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), has said that the corporation would henceforth employ electronic means to monitor fuel distribution across the country.
This, the GMD said was in a bid to check the activities of smugglers as he spoke at the 2022 to 2024 Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP) public hearing by the House of Representatives Committee on Finance.
He said that there was an ongoing initiative to put the electronic monitors on tank and fuel stations that would monitor the distribution of fuel in the country.
He stated that with the electronic monitoring, every truck carrying fuel would be visible as they discharged their load and would see all the fuel stations as they discharged.
Kyari said that the national fuel consumption per day may not be above 60 million litres as being speculated, adding however that anytime NNPC supply less than that, there would be a problem.
He also said that President Muhammadu Buhari had personally directed him to take steps that would curtail cross border smuggling, while also admitting the challenges posed by land borders, aiding activities of smugglers.
The GMD said that those who took crude oil across the border would not sell at the official price.
He said that the corporation was already engaging the Republic of Niger to establish a retail NNPC outlet I. A move that would curtail the activities of smugglers.
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He stated that the country may not exit the fuel subsidy regime in 2022, but stressed that it may by 2023, when the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) might had been fully activated.
According to Kyari, the decision of the NNPC to be on the board of the Dangote refinery was a calculated attempt, adding that as at today Nigeria does not have strategic storage.
“We are taking interest in Dangote refinery and up till now he does not want us to take 50 per cent equity and it was structured on the fact that he must buy 3000 barrels of crude oil from us per day,” he stated.
He said that Dangote had a choice to buy crude oil from anywhere in the works but we insisted that he must buy from the country, stressing that it was a good deal the NNPC was proud to enter into.
Kyari said that contrary to insinuation, the NNPC had not abandoned the country’s refineries and it was not about taking 500 million dollars loan to repair them.
He said that non of the country’s refineries had undergone full scale rehabilitation since 2000.
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