NMDPRA licensing: Don’t engage agents, regulator warns applicants

Forum 1 year ago

NMDPRA licensing: Don’t engage agents, regulator warns applicants

NIGERIAN Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) has warned applicants seeking operational licences against engaging third parties to access her automated licensing portal as NMDPRA has not accredited any agent to consult for applicants.

NMDPRA stressed the caution at the gathering in Port Harcourt, Rivers state in ongoing nationwide engagements to sensitise heavy petroleum products end users to obtain storage licenses and for stakeholders to embrace the transition from white products to gas at the last mile in line with new industry realities.

Addressing the issue based on common feedback from preceding engagements held in Lagos and Enugu, the Authority’s Executive Director, Distribution Systems, Storage and Retailing Infrastructure (DSSRI), Ogbugo Ukoha noted that the widespread dependence on so-called agents was inducing complaints by applicants blaming NMDPRA for delayed approvals.

Ukoha said, “In trying to access our licencing portals, some applicants always depend on third parties, with little or no value addition. Then it also creates time inefficiencies.

“They (applicants) come and speak about our agents. The Authority does not have agents. Our licensing portals require you as an applicant to log in, create a password only you would know, and upload your documents yourself.

“That means if you want to stay in business you have to improve your own IT capacity as well. You don’t need to go to any third party to do that. When you upload those documents, if our people query it, it will come back to you. You can see it on your own page.

“I have a boss much older than me. He sits on his own computer and approves his own licenses. I sit on a laptop myself and go through the whole country, the applications people make. And I take them one by one, whether it’s exports, whether vessels, whether depot, retail outlets, whatever, I sit and do it.”

Ukoha emphasised that “The introduction sometimes of agents by retailers is something I found as feedback from people. They will say oh, authority’s agents. Please we don’t have agents. Yes, every operator within the value chain must license, so the person that must do your lead test or your pressure test must be somebody we licensed for that purpose.

“People that will do calibration of your tanks are licensed for that purpose but they are not our agents and for simple portal management of uploading your documents, you don’t need them for that.

“So let’s take that responsibility in our hands, so when you’re queried, you don’t cry that you submitted this and one month after, I have no feedback. The essence of the portal is for one superior to sit and see what his juniors are doing, so if a file has stayed in their desk for too long they see it and query it.

“This is the value automation has brought into the system. So let’s embrace it directly and not allow third parties to create time inefficiencies that impede the intention to fast track the purpose.”