Fuelling Ghana’s economy through transparent fuel supply chain

More than 3,500 registered bulk road vehicles in the petroleum downstream industry transport 98 per cent of the volume of petroleum products consumed within the country.

Despite its flexibility of delivering petroleum products, this mode of distributing fuel is beset with numerous challenges including transit product shortages and false haulage claims.

The petroleum service providers exploited the lack of capacity of the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) to independently confirm the delivery of petroleum product to the retail outlets and subjected the Unified Petroleum Price Fund (UPPF) to abuse through the presentation of false claims for cost incurred for the transportation of petroleum products.

A classic example is the recent fire outbreak that occurred last month at a tanker parking yard behind the Ashaiman Timber in the Greater Accra Region.

The above incident resulted in three people sustaining various degrees of injury while 13 bulk road vehicles were totally burnt.

According to the Ghana National Fire Service, its preliminary investigations suspected siphoning of fuel to be the cause of the fire outbreak.

When the media visited the accident site the next morning after the outbreak, there was evidence of pumps and pipes around which suggested that there was more to the story.

One will ask why a loaded BRV park at the tank will be doing at the yard after lifting petroleum products. The practice is that when you lift products from the depot, you take it directly to the destination where you will have to discharge so you normally will not take products and bring it to your yard.

If we are to go by the preliminary investigations by the Fire Service, then obviously the affected bulk road vehicles would have been knocking the doors of the NPA with fraudulent claims payment for freight incurred for the transportation of petroleum products.

Also, it was common knowledge for service providers to present freight claims for the delivery of petroleum products to Tamale and locations in the northern part of the country while in actual fact the products were delivered to Accra and its environs.

Such malpractices lead to leakages in revenue to the state. According to the NPA, in 2014, the projected revenue loss was about 43million cedis.

To address this dual challenge, a more technological approach that will enable the NPA to have visibility on movement of BRVs and the exact location petroleum products are loaded from and delivered was required hence the introduction of the bulk road vehicle (BRV) tracking scheme.

BRV tracking scheme

The BRV Tracking System consists of a Global Position System (GPS), a set of volume Sensors and a web based monitoring application software.

The system enables the authority to have visibility on the quantities of product loaded into BRVs, the loading depots and where the loaded products are delivered to.
It also enables it to have visibility on the locations of BRVs and the quantity of products in them in real time.

This technology is proven, reliable and among the best industry practices in the monitoring of road transportation of petroleum products and has provided the solution that the NPA requires.

Progress so far

Since the introduction of the Scheme, it has provided relevant information to the authority to aid in the validation processes for freight claims payment.

This has reduced immensely the abuse in petroleum product haulage claims and the diversion of subsidised petroleum products such as premix fuel.

It is reported that revenue loss as a result of false freight claims has reduced from 12.3 per cent in 2014 to 2.3 per cent of total freight paid as of December 2016. Savings made are in excess of GH¢34 million per year.

Conclusion

The introduction of the BRV Tracking scheme reinforces the NPA’s quest to improve standards and controls in ensuring regular supply of petroleum products to all parts of the country through an efficient distribution system.

All sectors of the economy can benefit from efficiently managed downstream oil sector that delivers the petroleum products in the right quantity and at the quality required at relatively low cost.
Therefore, it is worthy to note that the role the NPA plays in ensuring adequate and reliable transport service for the petroleum downstream sector is essential for economic development.

The writer is a Communication Officer with the Public Relations and Consumer Service Department of the National Petroleum Authority.
Email: bowusu@npa.gov.gh