By Modupe Gbadeyanka
Chairman of Capital Oil and Gas Industries Ltd, Mr Ifeanyi Ubah, has absolved his company from the alleged theft of about 100 million litres of petrol stored in its depot in Lagos by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
Mr Ubah, while reacting to the theft allegation on Sunday in Lagos, called for a reconciliation of the company’s account with the NNPC.
He alleged that the NNPC has failed to tell the public that it also owed Capital Oil billions of Naira from their mutual business transactions, calling the allegation against his firm as mischievous and misleading.
“It is normal for parties in businesses to owe each other in business relationships and that if reconciliation is carried out with the NNPC, the firm will find out that there may be very little or nothing for Capital Oil to pay the corporation,” Mr Ubah said in a statement issued on Sunday.
He said further that, “In the last four months, NNPC has borrowed products running into millions of litres from Capital Oil.”
Speaking further on the matter, Mr Ubah said, “We have an ongoing relationship and we need to sit down and reconcile our accounts.
“NNPC has a subsisting contract with our company which is on throughput basis. The corporation has consistently been in breach of our contractual agreement by owing us money for services rendered.
“Payments from NNPC for services rendered by our company has consistently been delayed for periods spanning over one year and remains unpaid till date.
“Currently, NNPC owes us for services rendered to the corporation at very critical periods to salvage nationwide fuel scarcity since 2015 (more than two years now), amounting to millions of dollars and billions of Naira.”
“The corporation has failed to deliver products to us which were duly paid for.
“It is instructive to note that Capital Oil and Gas has trucked out over seven billion litres of petroleum products for the NNPC over the last few years making us their biggest partner in the downstream sector of Nigeria’s Oil and Gas Industry.
“We have written the NNPC severally, requesting for our outstanding payments and delivery of products duly paid for by us.
“Rather than honour our request, we are shocked that the corporation has resorted to this needless campaign of calumny, while refusing to make payments and deliver our products to us till date,” he said.
The NNPC had alleged that the petrol it kept in the procession of Capital Oil and MRS could not be found when needed, which raised eyebrows.
However, MRS later returned its own part of the diverted oil, leaving Capital Oil as one of the two yet to return.
Last Friday, the NNPC vowed to take full measures to recover about N11 billion worth of petrol it stored in the facilities of Capital Oil and Gas Ltd in Lagos.
