4th July, 2014
Nigeria’s downstream regulator, Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Authority (PPPRA) Nigeria has reduced the number of companies licensed to import petroleum products in the third quarter. In the second quarter, 40 companies had the license to import petroleum products but that has been trimmed to 27.
The 27 companies will import petroleum products between July to September after which they can reapply. The companies are expected to import around 1.7 million tonnes for third quarter, 1.15 million tonnes less than was imported in the second quarter.
According to experts, some licensed companies might not be unable to import due to financing obstacles, given that the Federal Government is yet clear its backlog of subsidy payments owed the companies after the subsidy fraud investigation in 2012, which revealed fake claims worth billions of dollars.
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 said.
Total Nigerian gasoline imports are expected to be close to 3.1 million tonnes. Nigeria is chronically short of oil products, particularly gasoline, due to a long period of under-investment in its domestic refineries.
Notable exclusion from the list is MRS Oil Nigeria but Oando, Total, Conoil, Folawiyo Oil and Gas, Forte Oil, Techno Oil, NIPCO and Masters Energy all made the cut.
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.
Others are A-Z, Ascon, Avidor, BSR, Bovas, Cybernetics, Dee Jones, Gulf Treasures, Hudson, Hyde, Integrated, Masters, Matrix, Mettle, Rainoil, Sahara, Shorelink, Techno, TSL