By Fredrick Wright
The Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, (NNPC), Mele Kyari, has disclosed the plan to deploy electronic gadgets to monitor fuel distribution across the country in order to check the activities of smugglers.
Kyari, who 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, oksaid that there was an ongoing initiative to put the electronic monitors on tanks 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 liters as being speculated, adding however that anytime NNPC supply less than that, there would be a problem.
He also noted 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 official price.
He said that the corporation was already engaging the Republic of Niger to establish a retail NNPC outlet there, a move that would curtail the activities of smugglers.
The NNPC boss stated that the country may not exit the fuel subsidy regime in 2022, but stressed that by 2023 when the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) might have been fully activated.
The decision of the NNPC to be on the board of the Dangote refinery according to him is 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 barrel of crude oil from us per day,” he stated.
He said that Dangote had a choice to buy crude oil from anywhere in the world, 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 insinuations, the NNPC had not abandoned the country’s refineries and it was not about taking 500 million dollars loan to repair them.
