Marketers put up defence for high subsidy funding

Oil marketers have defended themselves over the curiously high subsidy they received from government for the importation of petroleum products into the country.
The marketers, who were summoned by the Senate yesterday, said they were not to blame for the huge spending by the government.

The Managing Director of one of the oil marketers, Conoil, Biodun Wahab, told the Senator Magnus Abe-led committee looking into the spending on subsidy that his company joined the subsidy scheme in 2008 and had its first approval from the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency to import 12, 153 metric tons of petroleum products.
Wahab said the figure rose to 418, 954 metric tons with a reimbursement sum of N27.3 billion by the end of 2011.
He said the increase in reimbursement was as a result of fluctuation of oil prices in the international market, adding: “The cost of crude is a function of the fluctuation in the international oil price which you have to manage.
“When you look at the price of crude today, it is not as the same as 2009, and 2010.
“There is document to back this. We do not do any sharp practice. We do not share vessels with anybody and we take oil to Cotonu for ship to ship transfer because of insecurity at the Lagos port.”
The major oil marketers invited by the Senate yesterday for alleged complicity in the subsidy payment of over N2 trillion were Conoil Nigeria Ltd, A. A. Rano, ASB Investment Limited, Forte Oil Nigeria and Knight Bridge Limited.