<<Print>>

The National Petroleum Authority (NPA) has sounded caution to Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) not to engage in practices that contravene the rules governing the sector.

The caution was given by the Public Relations Officer of the NPA, Mohammed Abdul Kudus, in an interview with Nana Yaw Kesseh on "Kokrokoo" morning show on Peace FM.

Mr. Mohammed Kudus stated emphatically that the NPA will not condone any bad practice by any of the OMCs and will take sanctions against any oil marketer who breaches the terms and conditions.

"In fact, it is important for the industry so that at least when you sanitize it at every point in time. If we don't do this monitoring and taking such difficult decisions, at least the kind of industry we all want cannot be gotten. As difficult as it is, as painful as it is, at least once the law stipulates that, the Authority is only bound to yield to what the law says. So, everyone is doing his work; we have also done our work. Our work says at this point revoke the licence and we needed to do that."

He justified the revocation of licences of 30 Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) for non-compliance with the rules and regulations of the downstream petroleum regulator on the acquisition and maintenance of their licences.

According to him, "the NPA, as an institution established by law, is guided by some terms and conditions when it awards its licence to a marketing operator, in this case the OMC. So, once our monitoring shows you are not abiding by our terms and conditions to the extent of the infringement, we have different punishment that is meted out".

"In this particular case, it is largely an issue of non-payment of licence and non-compliance with the infrastructural requirement of the National Petroleum Authority. And to put this two combined, it means you are not worthy to still hold yourself out as an OMC and to be holding the licence of the National Petroleum Authority, so the NPA had the occasion to revoke the licences accordingly," he added.

He advised the OMCs to comply with the rules stressing, "this certainly will not be last of it at all. We are still monitoring the terms and conditions within which you are supposed to operate. At any point we found out that you are not one of the requirements that you are supposed to do or the other, obviously our sanctions will come upon you and when it is coming, it is really going to come without any hinderance at all".