The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, has announced that the Federal Government will launch an investigation to unravel the circumstances behind the circulation of adulterated petrol with methanol quantities above the country’s specification.
The Minister made this known on Wednesday while answering questions from State House reporters after the weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari.
The minister, said the government was “actively tackling” the issues around the “adulterated petrol” and noted that matters concerning damaged vehicles as a result of the “unusual” incident would also be taken into consideration.
He further cautioned that no one should jump into conclusion till the end of investigations.
Meanwhile, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC) has named MRS, Oando, Duke Oil and Emadeb as the importers of the adulterated fuel currently in circulation in the country.
The Chief Executive Officer/Group Managing Director, NNPC Ltd, Mallam Mele Kyari, said in a statement on Thursday that the company received a report from its quality inspector on the presence of emulsion particles in Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) cargoes shipped by four companies to Nigeria from Antwerp-Belgium.
NNPC also blamed its inspectors for failing to test imported petrol for presence of methanol.
He said, “It is important to note that the usual quality inspection protocol employed in both the load port in Belgium and our discharge ports in Nigeria do not include the test for percent methanol content and, therefore, the additive was not detected by our quality inspectors.
“The cargoes quality certificates issued at loadport (Antwerp-Belgium) by AmSpec Belgium indicated that the gasoline complied with Nigerian specification. The NNPC quality inspectors including GMO, SGS, GeoChem and G&G conducted tests before discharge also showed that the gasoline met Nigerian specification.”