The Petroleum Equalisation Fund Management Board (PEFMB) said it would begin 100 per cent electronic system of loading of petroleum products by November this year.

The Executive Secretary of the fund, Mrs Adefunke Kasali, made this known in an interview in Abuja. She said the project had been tagged ‘Project Aquila’, and would help to track down fraudulent marketers and enhance prompt payment of marketers’ claims.

“With Project Aquila, the first thing is that there must be loading and there must be receiving. One of the things that we have had is an issue where we were never sure that an item that was loaded was received. And in some cases, we even had situations where it was purportedly received, but it was never loaded.

“Aquila will ensure that there is a genuine transaction; that the product was loaded and was received. The other thing with Aquila is that the processing of that transaction is now very smooth and efficient and then the payment is done typically under two weeks.”

Kasali said at least 60 per cent of the depots in the country had been covered since the agency commenced electronic tracking of loading and movement of fuel tankers across the country in April. According to her, the agency was working very hard to ensure that all the depots in the country are ‘Aquila-ready’ by the end of November.

She explained that the project would entail using the latest Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag which would be administered to companies and operators. “With Aquila, we have moved to an end-to-end electronic solution where it is loaded and dispatched by a mobile computer working with an RFID device.