BOST not discriminating against OMCs – Provencal

The Managing Director of the Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation (BOST) Company Limited, Mr Edwin Alfred Provencal has dismissed accusations that some Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) are being favoured under the Gold for Oil policy.

Some OMCs claim that specific oil marketing companies have been selected by BOST to receive fuel for distribution under the gold for oil policy.

But speaking on Eyewitness News on Wednesday, Mr Provencal said the claims were inaccurate.

“Respectfully it is an untruth. When you look at this programme, which [firm] has the biggest outlet in Ghana, Goil, and which BDC sells fuel to Goil, it is Go Energy and Go Energy is a subsidiary of Goil. So if the market is challenged or there is a market failure, and you want to correct the market failure, you need to come in with a corrective measure.

“If you want to bring prices down, and you have an OMC that has 435 stations, and you have another one that has 10 stations, as the regulator who would you use to drive the price down? Is it the one that has the 10 stations or the one with the 435 stations? The whole idea is to drive prices down…it is not discriminatory.”

Mr Provencal revealed five other OMCs aside Go Energy bought fuel from BOST when the first consignment of fuel arrived in the country in January.

“When the products came in, Go Energy made their requests, Stratcon made their requests, Maranatha made their requests, Everstone made their requests, Oil Channel made their request. So six BDCs made requests, so how on earth did we sell to only Go Energy? All the six took products from us.”