Board Commences Electronic Fuel Loading, Soon

The Petroleum Equalisation Fund Management Board (PEFMB),
says it would begin 100 per cent electronic system of loading  petroleum products by November this year.

The Executive Secretary of the fund, Mrs Adefunke Kasali,
made this known in an interview with our correspondent in Abuja.

She said the project had been tagged ‘Project Aquila’, and
would help to track down fraudulent marketers and enhance prompt payment of
marketers’ claims.

“With project Aquila, the first thing is that there must be
a loading and there must be a receiving.

“One of the things that we have had is an issue where we
were never sure that an item that was loaded was received.

“And in some cases we even had situations where it was
purportedly received, but it was never loaded.

“Aquila will ensure that there is a genuine transaction;
that the product is loaded and received.

“The other thing with Aquila is that the processing of that
transaction is now very smooth and efficient and then the payment is done
typically under two weeks.”

Kasali said at least 60 per cent of the depots in the
country had been covered since the agency commenced electronic tracking of
loading and movement of fuel tankers across the country in April.

According to her the agency was working very hard to ensure
that all the depots in the country are “Aquila ready’’ by the end of November.

She explained that the project would entail using the latest
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag which would be administered to
companies and operators.

“With Aquila we have moved to an end-to-end electronic
solution where it is loaded and dispatched by a mobile computer working with an
RFID device.

“So that at each of our depots, our depot representatives
have this device, this is the mobile computer part of it and the RFID device,
which reads the information”.