By Tabora Bojang
Yesterday’s session at the National Assembly joint committee enquiring the importation and sale of fuel from a Russian oil ship, dealt with the government policy and process for storage of fuel at Gam Petroleum which was reportedly changed last year without the knowledge of senior officials of the ministry of finance which regulates it.
The committee was in receipt of a letter signed by the former minister of Petroleum Abdou Jobe, now Tourism Minister, announcing a new policy to allow international traders to bring products directly to the Gam Petroleum depot and wait for buyers, changing the old policy under which international traders can only bring fuel requested and imported by Oil Marketing Companies, OMCs.
To set the ball rolling, the lead questioner at the enquiry, Hon Kebba Lang Fofana, revealed that one of the companies involved in the deal, Apogee, had made an application on 8 May 2023 to deposit 9000 metric tons of fuel and got approval the next day. “They made another deposit request for 5000 metric tons on 10 May 2023 which was approved the very day. Two other requests were made on 6 and 23 August 2023 for the storage of 6000 and 14, 500 metric tons respectively,” he said.
However, according to Hon. Fofana, all of these requests by Apogee were granted approval before the coming of the new policy on 30 October 2023.
He then asked his witness, the permanent secretary Ministry of Petroleum Lamin Camara to inform the committee whether such approvals would be correct before the coming of the new policy directive and Camara replied that under the policy and norms that were in place before 30 October, such approvals “was not allowed”.
PS Camara said he doesn’t know the rationale behind Gam Petroleum officials’ acceptance of such an arrangement. “If one entity occupies all the tanks, then you are denying others the ability to import,” Camara added.
According to PS Camara, he was not at the Ministry when the new policy was issued on 30 October 2023.
Asked to state the difference this new policy has made in contrast to the previous arrangement, he said the “difference is that the new policy allows international traders to bring the product directly into the storage tanks” at the fuel depot which was not the case before.
Asked repeatedly to inform the committee about the rationale behind the ministry’s introduction of the new policy to allow international traders bring fuel without being contacted by OMCs, Camara said he cannot “justify the policy” because he was not in office at the time.
