By Fola James
Oando Plc is one of the marketers that imported adulterated premium motor spirit, PMS also known as petrol into the country, the Nigerian national petroleum corporation has revealed.
Mele Kyari, the Group Managing Direcor, GMD and chief executive officer of the NNPC disclosed this on Wednesday during a meeting with fuel marketers in Abuja, the nation’s capital.
Kyari spoke on the back of federal government decision to compensate vehicle owners whose vehicles were damaged by the adulterated fuel imported into the country recently by the NNPC.
The federal government has ordered the recall of over 100 million litres of the adulterated fuel after outrage by many Nigerians.
The development has created an artificial scarcity across the 36 states in the country and the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, with long queues of vehicles in petrol stations in major commercial cities.
The NNPC, the government agency solely responsible for fuel importation in the country has now blamed major marketers for the problem.
Apart from Oando, Kyari mentioned other marketers such as MRS, Duke Oil as some of the suppliers which imported methanol blended petrol into the country. He said necessary legal actions, in line with rule of engagement will be taken against the erring marketers.
The NNPC boss, however, stated that the products were certified before they were imported into the country, noting that cargoes quality certificates were issued at loadport (Antwerp-Belgium) by AmSpec Belgium, adding that the documents indicated that the gasoline complied with Nigerian Specification.
“The NNPC quality inspectors including GMO, SGS, GeoChem and G&G conducted tests before discharge also showed that the gasoline met Nigerian specification,’’ Kyari said.
Kyari noted that as a standard practice for all PMS import to Nigeria, the said cargoes were equally certified by inspection agent appointed by the NMDRA.
“It is important to note that the usual quality inspection protocol employed in both the load port in Belgium and our discharge ports in Nigeria do not include the test for Percent methanol content and therefore the additive was not detected by our quality inspectors’’ he stated .
Meanwhile, Kyari has reassured Nigerians of its capacity to restore sanity in the supply and distribution of quality petrol.
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