They made these statements yesterday before the joint committee of the Public Enterprise Committee (PEC) and the Finance and Public Accounts Committee (FPAC) while testifying on the ongoing petroleum saga involving US$30 million.
MD Hydara responded to the question of who has absolute allocations of ullage: "It was Apogee, the issue of Apogee for us as OMCs is that it's a monopoly. It's very disheartening when we realised that one player, who very little is known about, has been given a very high percentage of the depot, if not all, to store,” he expressed.
According to Mr. Hydara, under normal circumstances, the OMCs are given preference, hence these are the people who are licenced and paying the taxes, and who have all the required documentation to do business in the country. “But what they've been doing over the years is, OMCs can apply and traders can also apply but it is a complete opposite recently.”
“What I mean by that is, of course, Apogee was having almost over 80% of the space or more, and the OMCs couldn't even have a space. Especially major OMCs like ourselves, who have been ordering well in this country regularly and then it becomes very mind-blowing that any time we apply, we are rejected.”
Mr Hydara further outlined why there was an issue with approval for ullage applications which he said became a problem around June-July of 2023 till now. “We had a problem because we were struggling to bring in vessels to store like we used to do as mandated, and as per our licence, which is being issued to us so that we can import and store. And then it becomes difficult. Every time you apply, it's a rejected," he expressed.
Equally, Njie stated that: “If the Gambian authorities give all their allocation to one, it means he was authorised from the top. Since no one can just bring a vessel in Gambia and just store it at GAM Petroleum, he was authorised to store. And he was authorised to sell; and he was authorised to open a bank account; and we were told that he owned the product. So we the marketers had no other choice than to buy from him. We were put in a corner. If we didn't buy, the hospital or the school, nobody would have fuel,” he said.
“When it comes Creed, Ultimate Beige and Apogee the depot was full of their products because when we apply for merging they would tell us, ‘the depot is full’. We would be denied and we would ask them ‘who owns the product’, and they would say ‘it's the aforementioned’ and this was around June, July of 2023, which was a problem.”
