The Federal government Wednesday in
Abuja approved an automated fuel system management and censor network
aimed at revealing the daily fuel consumption by tracking fuel delivery
from the point of entry into the country to its final delivery in the
petrol station......
Briefing journalists at the end of the
weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting presided over by Acting
President Yemi Osinbajo in the State House, the Minister of State for
Petroleum, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, said the move was an initiative of the
Petroleum Equalisation Fund (PEF) conceived to assist in revealing the
exact litres of petroleum being consumed in the country every day.
Kachikwu also said the adoption of the
PEF initiative had become imperative in view of discrepancies in figures
being bandied as daily fuel consumption in the country, and
consequently affecting subsidy payment and remittance to federation
account while a huge volume of petroleum products is illegally moved out
of the country.
According to him, when the network
becomes operative, every truck conveying fuel would be licensed with a
driver and a transport company with a view to finding the transporter
and the company that will take responsibility for any missing truck.
The minister also said with the advent
of the network, the exact daily fuel consumption in the country would be
known for the first time adding that the Nigerian National Petroleum
Corporation (NNPC), Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) and
Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) would collaborate
effectively to achieve this aim.
He said: “The president has given a very
serious mandate that we ought to rein in on his process. The essence of
what PEF is doing is that this will enable us track refined petroleum
product movement from the point of LC (letter of credit) opening from
the vessels that come into Nigeria, up until the point where they are
discharged into tanks in Nigeria, and from the tanks into trucks in
Nigeria, monitor the trucks till they deliver the products into the
storage tanks for the filling stations and they are discharged and sold.
“So, that will produce a 100 per cent
holistic monitoring of this production. For the first time, we will be
able to tell how much petroleum products we consume in this country
because there has been so much going on in terms of the movement of
consumption numbers from 30 something million liters a day to 70 million liters to 18 million liters a day during the difficult times.
“And the challenge the president has
given me is to rein that in. Let’s know what we consume in reality.
Let’s know where these products are going and this process will be able
to track every truck. So, a typical truck will be licensed with a
driver, with a transport company. So, if a truck misses, you can find
the transporter and the company that takes responsibility.
“So, we expect this to be over a period
of three years but we promise that within one year, the real effects of
this will begin to show. Obviously, you need time to train and to
continue to improve the system. We hope that by the time we start doing
the 2020 budget in 2019, we would have gotten to a point where the
losses that you are seeing are being tracked and substantially, impact
will be made in monies that come into the federation accounts
“It will help us keep proper data
repository of consumption in this country, data on all trucks that
operate, total number of products received, what is sold out of filling
stations and it is going to be a collaborative system that involves
NNPC, DPR and PPPRA but situated quite frankly in PEF,” he said.
The minister also said FEC approved the
review of a contract sum for the construction of Nigerian Content
Development Management Board (NCMB) headquarters in Yenagoa, the capital
of Bayelsa State, from the initial N27 billion in 2015 to N42 billion.
According to the minister who described
the project as a dramatic skyline in Yenagoa, the upward review was
largely dictated by variables in foreign exchange, recalling that the
exchange rate which was initially about N157 to $1 is now N305 to $1
“and still counting.”
He also said the review was necessary to
facilitate the completion of the contract, pointing out that once
completed, NCMB will stop paying rent on a number of buildings it had
rented in Yenagoa.
He added: “But most important, the whole
glamour of the South-south states during the vice president’s visit to
the Niger Delta with me and the Minister of Niger Delta, was largely to
see oil companies during foothold in some of these South-south states.
“The building is larger than what the NCMB needs and already, talks are
on with AGIP and a few of them who want to position their presence very
effectively in some of these areas. If we continue at this pace of
construction, Mr. President should be able to commission that building
between the end of this year and early next year.”
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