FG reduces licensees for petrol importation to 27 in Q3
The Federal Government has reduced the number of
companies licensed to import petrol in the third quarter to 27
from 40 in the previous three months.
According to Reuters, lists corroborated by regional industry sources showed on Friday the 27 companies were allocated gasoline import rights by downstream regulator Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Authority (PPPRA).
These companies are expected to import around 1.7 million
tonnes for third quarter, down from 1.85 million tonnes in the
second quarter.
Though market sources expect some winners will be unable to
import owing to financing obstacles – some are still waiting for
a backlog of subsidy payments owed by the government following
the 2012 subsidy fraud investigation, which unearthed billions
of dollars worth of fake claims.
Nigeria imports gasoline through two state-owned authorities
- PPPRA and the Pipelines and Product Marketing Company, PPMC.
The PPPRA allocations vary quarter-on-quarter while the PPMC
typically brings in about 1.4 million tonnes per quarter through
crude-for-product swap agreements with traders, market sources
Total Nigerian gasoline imports are expected to be close to
3.1 million tonnes.
The country is chronically short of oil products,
particularly gasoline, due to a long period of under-investment
in its domestic refineries.
MRS Oil Nigeria was absent from the list, after
being included in the second quarter, but some return winners
were Oando, Total, Conoil,
Folawiyo Oil and Gas, Forte Oil, Techno Oil, NIPCO and
Masters Energy.
Mobil Nigeria PLC, ExxonMobil's local arm, was
listed among the winners with larger volumes as well as Aiteo.
Allocation sizes vary from 30,000 tonnes up to 120,000 tonnes.
Following is a list of companies licensed to import gasoline
for July to September by PPPRA.
1 A-Z
2 Aiteo
3 Avidor
4 BSR
5 Bovas
6 Conoil
7 Cybernetics
8 Folawiyo
9 Forte
10 Gulf Treasures
11 Hyde
12 Integrated
13 Matrix
14 Mettle
15 NIPCO
16 Oando
17 Rainoil
18 Sahara
19 Shorelink
20 Total
21 TSL
22 Mobil
23 Ascon
24 Hudson
25 Dee Jones
26 Techno
27 Masters