TheCable

Capital Oil chairman Ifeanyi Ubah has said the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is owing his company N16 billion.

He said this on Thursday at a public hearing organised by the house of representatives committee on petroleum downstream in Abuja.

The house committee is investigating the alleged disappearance of 82 million metric litres of petrol belonging to NNPC stored at Capital Oil tank farm in Lagos state.

Ubah stated that the corporation had blown the incident out of proportion.

“The contract which is what we operate with NNPC puts us in a position of a stock manager which is somewhat the vessel akin to an oil bank,” he said.

“This allows for coming in and loading out of products so long as we ensure that all parties having products in our storage ultimately receive their total stock.

“The NNPC in the past has also borrowed products from us to keep their supply and distribution chain running.

“NNPC claimed that we owe N11 billion but failed to reveal that they owe us N16 billion with a key portion of the debt spanning over two years.”

Ubah said although his company acknowledges that it has products belonging to the NNPC in stock, the corporation had failed to conduct a reconciliation with his company “before rushing into making allegations”.

NNPC had earlier said Ubah returned N2 billion out of the N11 billion in question.

Henry Nkem Obi, chief operating officer of the petroleum pricing and marketing company (PPMC), had told the house committee on Wednesday that before the reported diversion of the petroleum products, the NNPC had an agreement with Capital Oil that no party tampers with any petroleum products consignment in its custody without the knowledge of the other party.

“We’ve since engaged in the process of negotiations for the defaulting party to return the products to the NNPC. Capital Oil has paid N2 billion and negotiations to get the full payment are on-going,” he was quoted to have said.