Petrol: Conoil, Oando, others to import 4.8 billion litres

The Petroleum Pricing Regulatory Agency has issued import allocations to 42 marketers to bring in 3,575,000 metric tonnes or 4.79 billion litres of petrol into the country during the second quarter of this year.

The development may have finally laid to rest the controversy surrounding the reluctance of the marketers to import the product as a result of uncertainties over the continuing payment of subsidy on the product by the Federal Government.

Inadequate supply of petrol has led to long queues at filling stations across the country in recent times, as motorists are increasingly finding it difficult to get the product, fuelling fears of another round of crisis in the downstream petroleum sector.

Some of the marketers that got the allocations were the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Conoil, Forte Oil, Mobil, MRS, Oando, NIPCO and Total.

PPPRA said the allocation titles must reside with the beneficiary companies and could not be assigned to a third-party under any circumstance.

The volume to be supplied into the system for the quarter, it was learnt, was based on the marketers’ performance in the past and their ability to secure the needed financing.

Iwas also gathered that the agency decided not to hold the marketers responsible for the poor performance of supplies for the fourth quarter of 2011, which was put at about 33 per cent, due to a case of force majeure in the operating environment.

Last month, PPPRA had assured the oil marketers that it had not stopped processing subsidy claims from genuine importers of petroleum products contrary to insinuations in some quarters.

The Executive Secretary of the agency, Mr. Reginald Stanley, had said then that the agency had completed the processing of all claims from marketers for 2011.

“While marketers have been holding back imports due to the unavailability of credit lines by banks, the recent announcement of the N888bn for subsidy provided in the 2012 budget should give enough comfort to both to the marketers and banks to resume imports very aggressively,” Stanley explained.

He announced that the mid quarter performance review for Premium Motor Spirit showed a 27 per cent achievement by marketers.