NNPC Sends DSS and EFCC After Nigerian Companies Over N11Billion 'Missing' Fuel

Maikanti Baru's NNPC is displeased that its products have gone missing

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has said that it is looking into reports that it was allegedly defrauded out of oil products by some Nigerian oil companies.

Premium Times reports that this follows an earlier report that the Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), more popularly known as petrol, which was stored with Capital Oil & Gas and MRS Petroleum by a subsidiary of the oil corporation called NNPC Retail, based on a special arrangement, went missing under suspicious circumstances.

Now Henry Ikem-Obi, NNPC's Chief Operating Officer, Downstream, said in Abuja that part of the measures considered to facilitate the recovery of the products included its decision to alert the Department of State Service, DSS, and the Economic Financial Crime Commission, EFCC.

He said the alleged scam was discovered sometime in January when it needed the fuel it stored with the oil companies but could not access them.

“We instructed the Nigerian Products Marketing Company (NPMC) 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.

Uba says his company Capital Oil and Gas has done nothing wrong

“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 The visit revealed that there was no molecule of product for the NNPC to evacuate,” he said.

But one of the oil companies, Capital Oil and Gas has denied any wrongdoing. Its chairman Ifeanyi Uba said it is the NNPC that needs to settle with his company.

“NNPC has been owing us (Capital Oil) on petroleum products supplies over the last two years. We have written several letter to them calling for reconciliation without success. We have written to them calling for total reconciliation of accounts, and they have agreed,” Uba told Premium Times on telephone on Friday, March 17.

Meanwhile, large crude oil deposits have been found in the Bida Basin located in Niger state and President Muhammadu Buhari has been duly informed of this development.

This was made known by Professor Nuhu Obaje who is the director of the Ibrahim Badamasi Babaginda University Research Centre, Lapai at the at the exhibition of raw materials and local products in the Manufacturing and Equipment EXPO Nigeria 2017, in Lagos on Thursday, March 16.