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The Federal Government has said that it has initiated the use of a tracking device to track every truck loading petroleum product from any of its depots as part of efforts to stop the smuggling of these products and arrest offenders.
This follows the reported sharp increase in the daily consumption of petrol by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), which is caused by the activities of smugglers.
This was made known by the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Sylva, at a forum organised by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) to measure the achievements recorded in the oil and gas sector in the last 2 years.
Sylva pointed out that although a lot had been achieved in the industry, the activities of smugglers had continued to overshadow the successes especially as it concerned fuel subsidy and the quantity of petroleum products consumed in the country.
He said, “This is one big question that we try to answer ourselves because when we look at the number of load-outs from our depots every day, we know that we don’t have that level of consumption of petroleum products in Nigeria.’’
Sylva said that the government has decided to track products that go out from its depots to ensure they are delivered straight to designated filling stations in the country adding that the era of smuggling products across the country’s borders was over as it negatively contributed to the high number of litres of petroleum products said to be consumed in the country on a daily basis.
He said, “We have been able to put a tracking system to track the trucks that load from the depots, so that we are sure that when they load products from the depots, they take it straight to the filling stations. When you say that Nigerians are consuming 60 million litres, and you look at the number of cars on the Nigerian roads, you will know that those 60 million litres cannot be possibly consumed in Nigeria.
“But we have a situation where our price for products here is cheaper than the price across the border; sometimes the price across the border is double or even more than double our own price here. So, it’s an opportunity for profit, and some people will want to take our product and sell it across the border to make extra money.
