The management of the National Petroleum-SL (NP-SL) is reported not to have taken kindly to the seal-off, last Thursday in Freetown, of one of its outlets at Brookfields, west of the capital.
A senior management staff told this medium yesterday that when a team from the Petroleum Regulatory Agency (PRA) stormed the said station with heavily armed security personnel; they met a fuel tanker standing by with ten thousand liters in it waiting to be off-loaded and sold to the public.
Apart from that, the senior NP-SL staff disclosed that the PRA’s claim that the Brookfields NP-SL fuel station was having 15,000 liters of petrol and 22,000 liters of diesel and was refusing to sell to the public thereby creating an artificial scarcity was not true.
The NP-SL senior staff revealed that when the team from PRA went to that Brookfields fuel station and did their examination of the underground tanks; they were told that the fuel in the tanks had already been paid for by the Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces (RSLAF) and that when the stand-by fuel tanker with the ten thousand liters in it would have been off-loaded; the station would start selling to members of the public instantly.
“But the Head of PRA gave the impression that our institution was hoarding fuel and insinuating further that it was sabotaging the government and sealed-off our pumping machines,” the NP-SL senior staff told this medium on the phone.
Ironically, the next day when the PRA realised that the station management was telling the truth about the fuel being paid for by the RSLAF; a team from the same PRA reportedly went and unseal the seal on one of the pumping machines.
“What I think the PRA should have done last Thursday was to have allowed the station to have sold to the general public after its examinations of the underground tanks and impose a fine if there were infractions,” the senior NP-SL staff noted. He added that, “By sealing-off the station, the PRA deprived the public of fuel and the government of much needed revenue that day.”
Concluding, the senior NP-SL staff stated that, “NP-SL is completely apolitical and continues to frown at regulators who want to advance their political careers at the expense of NP-SL. As a proud and responsible corporate citizen, NP-SL will continue to work assiduously to ensure seamless flow of petroleum products in Sierra Leone.”
Many onlookers that Thursday noted that there was no need for the PRA to have hurriedly summoned the media and civil society activists to witness the sealing-off process. “As a matter of fact, NP-SL should be applauded for its tireless and unflinching efforts to ensure seamless flow of products into the market when other marketers were conspicuously silent during these challenging times”, said one onlooker.