NNPC Drags MRS, Capital Oil To EFCC

In a move to recover about 130 million litres of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) valued at N17,439 billion belonging to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), the company said, it had reported Capital Oil and MRS which are alleged to have stolen the product to both the Department of State Services (DSS) and the anti-graft agency, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
A statement by NNPC’s Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division, Mr Ndu Ughamadu, said the decision to take the issue to DSS and EFCC was part of measures aimed at achieving full recovery of the products or its monetary value.
He explained that, the product was stored in the facilities of the two indigenous downstream operators, under a throughput arrangement in order to ensure a robust strategic reserve.
The product, according to him, disappeared under inexplicable circumstances.
The Chief Operating Officer, Down Stream, of the Corporation, Mr Henry Ikem-Obih, who provided details of the act by the two indigenous oil firms told newsmen in Abuja, that the infraction was unearthed earlier in the year when NNPC needed to access the products stored in the said facilities in Apapa area of Lagos.
He said: “We instructed the Pipelines and Products Marketing Company (PPMC), a subsidiary of NNPC, to send additional trucks to those locations to move products for distribution aimed at meeting a supply shortfall we discovered in the market, but after days of not being able to access the terminals we had to take a decision as NNPC management to invite auditors and inspectors to go and do a physical check on the inventories.”
Ikem-Obih said that, the infraction by the two downstream firms was a violation of existing throughput contract which prohibits the owners of the facilities from tampering with the products in their custody without express permission of the corporation.
The NNPC official, however revealed that so far, MRS has fully complied by returning the 30 million litres of PMS which it expropriated but that Capital Oil Limited was yet to comply.