The Group Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) Mele Kyari, had said that the NNPC Retails Limited made a profit of N18.4 billion in the first quarter of 2023.
He disclosed this on Friday when he appeared before the House of Representatives Ad-hoc Committee investigating the acquisition of OVH Energy by NNPCL.
Kyari said that the NNPCL has over 900 fuel stations spread across the country and controls about 30 percent of market in the down stream sector of the petroleum industry.
He said, “This company came into existence as a result of the passage of the Petroleum Industries Act which included the creation of a commercial company oil company that will work for all.
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“You also decide that the shareholders of the this company will be the federation meaning that the overall 200 million Nigerians are shareholders in this company. The PIA also mandate this company to be the energy guarantor for this country. So, it is not an option for this company to do otherwise.
“It is part of the law that we should protect national interest in ways that guarantee energy security. It is very clear that there is huge relationship between energy security and national security anywhere in the world. Countries go to war to ensure energy security.
“It is on the basis of this and to discharge our responsibility as proscribed by the law, we do need to have capacity to have control over the downstream sector of the economy.
“We started NNPC Retail Limited in the year 2000 and until the period of acquiring the OVH chain, we were not able to grow organically. We only had 48 stations that we owned and a mirage of companies that are affiliates all over the country, some of which were not functional fuel stations. They could not serve the purpose because there were dealers who could not pay for the cost of the products and we had locations where we could not guarantee either the quantity or quality of the products sold”.
Speaking on the acquisition of OVH Energy by NNPCL, Kyari said the organisation did nothing wrong in the acquisition as it was purely a business decision that had begun to yield results less than one year after it was done.
