• The Executive secretary of COPEC says NPA must halt issuing licenses to new Oil Marketing companies and channel its focus on upgrading the sector

• He said NPA must ensure that these OMCs are able to show and demonstrate a track record of what they are into

• Duncan Amoah also called on NPA to make it a point to monitor the operations and activities of new OMCs

The National Petroleum Authority (NPA) has been charged to halt issuance of new licenses to Oil Marketing Companies and focus on cleaning and upgrading the sector.

The chairman of the Chamber of Petroleum Consumers (COPEC) is the latest to make this call after a similar proposal from the Association of Oil marketing companies.

This call comes on the back of reports that a lot of oil firms are collapsing, resulting in about 58 companies defaulting to a tune of about GH¢641 million in taxes.

Duncan Amoah said NPA must act now.

“It is certain that the NPA is refusing to do due diligence before giving license some of the this actors, other than that, we shouldn’t be where we are now but then again, it is not too late to halt licensing until and unless of course the people have given you a demonstrable track record of what they are in there to do, you don’t have a situation where somebody has three station and it pushing almost 20 million litres every month, when you know very well average station will do between a million and 2 million monthly,” he said.

He also noted that NPA seems to be unconcerned about these happenings and urged them to focus on cleaning the sector.

“Yes, the NPA sometimes sit unconcerned, without checking how these companies are able to move sometimes 10 million, 20 million litres with only three outlets or five or six outlets whose optimization should not reach there,” he added.