The Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) has stated that it is not their job to protect a company, adding that they are regulators.
NMDPRA stated this while replying claims by Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote that they were demarketing a company that they should be protecting.
Recall that the Chief Executive Officer of the regulatory body, Farouk Ahmed claimed that Dangote’s diesel was inferior, as it has more sulphur content than the imported one.
He also said the refinery, which has been selling diesel and aviation fuel in Nigeria for months, had yet to be licensed.
Reacting, Dangote lamented that it was disheartening that the regulators were not safeguarding the petroleum market in Nigeria.
In an interview with Punch on Sunday, NMDPRA’s spokesman, George Ene-Ita fumed over the allegation that the regulator was demarketing a company it should protect, wondering if Dangote wants the agency to bend the rules in his favour.
“Why should we protect any company? We are regulators, operations are going, don’t protect anybody; we regulate operators. If he says protect, it means we are shielding. It means that we should bend the rules. We don’t do that, we regulate every company.
“And we don’t demarket, what does he mean? You only demarket your competitors to gain an advantage. We are not competing with an operator. The word, ‘demarketing’, is only used when two competing brands are fighting. We are not an operator; we are a regulator. How can we demarket? Please, I take exception to that, on behalf of my organisation. We are not demarketing anybody. We are regulating every local refinery, including NNPC,” he clarified.
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Ene-Ita furthered that the body is expecting fresh reports to confirm the real sulphur content of the diesel produced by the Dangote refinery as the company debunked claims of inferior fuel production.
He said the agency had done its job and would not engage in a media fight with anybody over the claims made by the NMDPRA Chief Executive.
According to Ene-Ita, the authority has about 15 engineers and scientists embedded in the Dangote refinery, whose fresh report about the refinery’s sulphur content will be out on Monday (today).
The NMDPRA spokesman posited that a lot might have changed within a space of five days.
“We are not fighting anybody. Dangote refinery is the same as an indigenous local refinery. We are regulators, we don’t fight in the media. We have done our job, and that is it.
“You know we are dealing with engineering and time, and when we deal with engineering and time, it means that whatever claims put forward can be put to test and verified or debunked. If you recall, the ACE made that pronouncement on the sideline of an interaction on Wednesday or so. Between that time and now, it’s been like five days, a lot can change. So, 650ppm or 500 can come down to whatever.
“What I am saying is that I can’t give you any verifiable result for now, being a Sunday evening, until perhaps tomorrow when we will be in a position to review our technical report that must have been submitted by our engineers who are embedded in that plant. What normally comes to us are weekly reports. These particular tasks are done across the week from Monday to Sunday; even now, operations are going on and our engineers are there. So, I can’t speak to the claims made by that refinery now,” Ene-Ita explained.
