By Michael Eboh

The Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR, yesterday, commenced the gradual phase-out of manual measurements of fuel at petrol stations, during its enforcement activities, with the introduction of a digital measuring device to detect sharp practices by petrol filling stations across the country.

Petrol

Addressing newsmen in Abuja after conducting a surveillance of petrol stations, Zonal Controller, Abuja Office of the DPR, Mr. Buba Abubakar, said the agency has identified three focal areas in its quest to restore sanity in the downstream petroleum industry.

Abubakar identified the digital measuring device as Seraphin can, noting that this was a significant improvement on the previous device which was analogue.

He noted that with the digital measuring device, DPR officials would provide the exact quantity of the commodity being dispensed to motorists by fuel pumps in petrol stations.

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He further listed the three areas of interest of the DPR to include diversion, hoarding and under-dispensing.

“We are going to look at diversion, hoarding and under-dispensing very well because they are cheating the public in terms of under-dispensing. We are going to look at these three things and we are going to sustain our surveillance on petrol stations,” he said.

Abubakar added that the DPR had conducted an audit of retail stations in Abuja and environs, which had led to the sealing of 10 filling stations.

He said, “We are going into the ember months and that is why we have audited the retail stations to make sure that they are up and doing. And out of the over 320 stations that we have in Abuja, we discovered that 10 were not performing up to the required standard. We sealed all the 10 of them and when we went there today we discovered that five have upgraded to the standard set by DPR and they were unsealed.

“So right now I want to tell the marketers that we are going to sustain this our surveillance and they should be very careful in what they are doing. We have come to realise that marketers are cheating the public by under-dispensing products. So we are going to take a critical look at these three highlighted items and, of course, we will sustain surveillance.”

Also speaking, Head, Public Relations of the Abuja Zonal Office of the DPR, Mr. Saidu Mohammed, disclosed that the digital Seraphin can was of enormous advantage to the consumers, marketers and to the Nigerian government, because  you will never achieve anything without accuracy.

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He said, “You know what this means to government revenue; there were the areas where we insisted that DPR cannot continue analogue; that is why we launched the Seraphin can.

“The Seraphin can also takes care of safety; you can guage temperature and accuracy. To be precise, apart from these two things that has happened, government stands to get quite a lot as the activities of DPR is concerned.”

Saidu noted that of the 10 petrol stations earlier sealed by the DPR, five had upgraded and are currently operational, while the remaining five were still shut because of the nature of their infractions.

Vanguard