WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2010-11-30 Time: 09:00:02 Posted By: News Poster
By Adeola Yusuf
Lagos – Commercial banks and other lenders may takeover over N250 billion worth of assets belonging to tank farm owners in Nigeria, Daily Independent gathered at the weekend.
Jetty and Petroleum Tank Farm Owners of Nigeria (JEPTFON expressed concerns at the threats by their bankers to sell their assets, urging the federal government to come to their rescue.
The group also called on the government to set up a committee to look into the case involving one of its members, MRS Oil and Bank PHB, over the former’s alleged default in the payment of the $50m facility granted it by the bank.
Spokesman of JEPTFON, Somairi Tanunokuro, who stated this in a chat with newsmen said: “We are seriously baffled at the government’s negligence of our sector owing to the fact that it has bailed out the banking sector, agric, aviation, manufacturing sector, textile industry and even Nollywood recently, without considering the oil sector, which is the mainstay of Nigeria’s economy. We are concerned at the threats by our bankers to sell our assets without due consideration to our present dilemma and the after effect, which is massive retrenchment.”
The group, a branch of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG), also called on the government to mediate in the matter to ensure that the parties resolve their differences amicably.
Tanunokuro added that there is a need for an amicably settlement of the matter currently in court became necessary in order to avert the looming fuel scarcity, which will erupt as a result of the court order against the oil company.
He said JEPTFON, which manages about 70 per cent of petroleum products distribution in Nigeria encountered setbacks in their businesses in the wake of the global economic crises, which drastically reduced oil prices.
He said these setbacks hindered them from servicing some loans obtained from Nigerian banks.
“Many private oil and gas depots are in dilemma, groaning under the weight of loans from Nigerian banks, with signals of impending fuel scarcity. Ever since, we have been managing our debt profile with our banks and have made them to know that we are not in full control of our businesses, owing to government’s control of the sector and failure in the implementation of full deregulation of the downstream petroleum industry. This action of government has made non-realisation of our cash flow projections as approval of import demands by our members has hardly been met,” he said.
JEPTFON, he said, has a major line of trade in the refined products, which are, premium motor spirit (PMS), dual-purpose kerosene and automotive gas oil (AGO).
He said, government, through the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) controls what JEPTFON imports and guides profitability of this product.
The government, he added, also through the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), grants approval on allocation as well as NNPC policy of equal approval ratio without considering investment capacity; these are some of our constraints, which have not only affected big investments in the industry, but have also jeopardised our recovery speed.
According to him, the inconsitency of allocation of these products is also a major setback”, the group said, adding that government’s little production of AGO has paralysed importation capacity as it (government) determines the price as well as the industry margin, making investors’ cash flow non-realisable.
He noted that the oil industry plays a leading role in Nigeria’s economy, JEPTFON passionately appealed to the Federal Government to come to their aid by bailing out the oil sector as it did to other sectors.
Original date published: 29 November 2010
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201011300337.html?viewall=1