Oil marketers have raised concerns about the shutdown of the portal of Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited which is used to purchase petrol. They said in a Punch report that this is making it impossible for them to apply for the commodity purchase.
They said marketers are still awaiting over 90 million litres of petrol from the state-owned company valued at about N79bn.
National Publicity Secretary of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, Chinedu Ukadike, according to Punch, said the association is still waiting for the portal’s opening.
“They are on it; our marketers are still loading petrol from the NNPC. I can’t confirm the price now because the portal is still shut down.
Read also: Why NNPC prioritises Dangote for first phase of naira crude sale
“We have more than 2,000 tickets for 45,000 litres (of petrol). That is 45,000 multiplied by 2,000, you can now know the number of million litres it will be. This is just an estimate, you know I don’t work with NNPC and I don’t know what is on their system,” Ukadike stated in the report.
He said that a 45,000-litre truckload of PMS is around N39.5m, making N79bn when multiplied by 2,000.
The Petroleum Retail Outlets Owners Association of Nigeria also confirmed in the Punch report that its members could not access the NNPC purchasing portal.
PETROAN President, Billy Gillis-Harry said “The portal shutdown affects us too, we are all buying from NNPC,” he said.
The Punch report quotes NNPC spokesperson, Olufemi Soneye as explaining that the company shut the portal due to a significant backlog.
Soneye explained that the shutdown became necessary to stop NNPC from holding marketers’ capital for too long.
“We have a significant backlog to address. The closure is intended to prevent us from holding marketers’ funds for an extended period,” Soneye further said in the report.
He, however, assured marketers that the portal would be reopened after the backlog had been reduced.
Join BusinessDay whatsapp Channel, to stay up to date
Open In Whatsapp
