Abuja, June 25, 2024 – The Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) has denied allegation that the agency was allowing importation of dirty fuel into the country.
Dangote Petroleum Refinery recently accused the authority of issuing licenses to marketers to import dirty fuel into the country
Ogbugo Ukoha, the Executive Director (Distribution Systems, Storage, and Retailing Infrastructure) in the agency, however, refuted the allegation after a meeting with oil marketers and local refiners in Abuja on Tuesday.
He said that contrary to the reports, dirty fuel was not being imported in the country.
Ukoha said the sulphur content of fuel being imported into the country is not above the lawful limit.
“There is no dirty fuel being brought in. I am giving you the statistics for June and what we have on the average from the import has continued to go down from 200PPM of the average and now we have it below 50PPM (Parts per million) that is provided under the law.”
He said that the Economics Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Heads of States in 2020 endorsed a declaration adopting the African Fuel Roadmap that requires that certain products have a minimum 50PPT per million litres of sulphur.
“So, as an Authority what have we done since we came into being? We started by engendering compliance. We saw a downward trend up to 2022-2023 December.
“In December and in January of this year, we noticed a spike in the sulphur content of products being imported. And we now began strong enforcement from 1st February.
“In the local refineries, remember that declaration deferred so they continued to produce at a higher level.
“But we are not very anxious about that because even the new refineries that are coming on have within their design of the plants the sulphurization limit that we will see in the nearest future going down as low as 10PPM,” he said.
