By Fatima Saka
The A-Z Petroleum Products Ltd has urged the House of Representatives to help in recovering N30 billion liabilities due to them from the Ministry of Finance.
This was revealed on Wednesday in Abuja during a public hearing as Mr. Hafford Udochukwu, who was the representative of the firm made the plea while appearing before the House ad hoc Committee investigating the daily consumption of petroleum.
Speaking on, Mr Udochukwu said the federal government has a liability of N30 billion after the firm supplied 245.89 million litres of PMS in 2015, 26.27 million litres in 2017 and 26.64 million litres in 2018.
“We have not been paid since 2017 because of that we stopped trading in PMS, we are being owed over N30 billion by the government for subsidy differentials and because of that, we have stopped trading.
“We have not been trading on PMS, we are kind of handicapped. Several times, we have written to the ministry. They have paid others but we have not been paid, in fact, we went to court two months ago.
“We are asking the committee to prevail on the Ministry of Finance so that they can pay us the outstanding,’’ he said.
In his ruling, the Chairman of the Committee, Abdulkadir Abdullahi representing Kano west asked Mr Udochukwu to supply the committee with relevant documents to help in the intervention.
Meanwhile, another committee investigating the subsidy regime from 2013 to 2022 also met to investigate all traders involved in the direct sales, direct purchase deal.
Members of the committee raised concerns on the crude oil for petrol deal when representatives of Hyde Oil appeared before them.
Hon. Mark Gbillah representing Benue North stated that the government keeps on giving out crude oil without getting other byproducts aside from PMS.
Hon. Gbillah asked Abdulwahab Oseni, the representative of Hyde Oil on the byproducts from crude oil in the DSDP deal.
“There is more value addition in the refining of crude. This is part of the things we have issues with in this country, there is more value to a barrel of crude after refining than when you just sell the barrel. What is happening to the byproducts from our crude?” He asked.
Mr Oseni responded that oil marketers involved in the DSDP deal are not involved in refining products.
“In our DSDP contract with NNPC, they did not ask us to refine the product. They did not ask us to give them the value of each of the byproducts,” he said.
He added, “There is no obligation under the DSDP contract for us to refine the petroleum product. As a trading company, we trade the cargos and then we bring the cargoes at the time they ask us.”
