The state-owned Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation incurs a loss of more than Tk 100 crore in the name of ‘system loss’ in handling imported fuel oils, sources in the oil sector said.
As the country’s lone importer and distributor of petroleum products, BPC incurs the loss due to rampant pilferage and corruption at terminals and depots, the sources said.
They told New Age that a nexus of BPC employees and dishonest traders is allegedly involved in a practice of manipulation to pilfer huge quantities of costly imported fuels at the time of handling and distribution.
But BPC authorities did little to stop such loss while the syndicate kept on minting money through stealing the fuel oils from the terminals, depots and at the time of transporting them
through river routes.
When contacted, chairman of BPC Abu Bakr Siddique said, ‘It is in our knowledge and we are trying to contain such a loss.’
‘We keep monitoring by engaging special teams at the terminals at the time of unloading of the imported petroleum products from the ships to check pilferage,’ the BPC chairman said.
‘The allowable system loss in handling the petroleum products is only 0.3 per cent and often it goes beyond. But we make an average on the losses of the whole year,’ he said.
The system loss in the handling imported fuels now came down to 0.17 per cent, he claimed.
BPC distributes the imported fuels and petroleum products from the country’s lone oil refinery, the Eastern Refinery Ltd. through three oil companies—Jamuna Oil Company, Padma Oil Company and Meghna Petrolium Ltd.
Each oil company has around 20 depots at different locations of the country to facilitate the supply of fuels and most of the pilferage and manipulation allegedly occur in those depots, sources said.
A section of depot superintendents and their aides even allegedly take advantage of measurement fluctuation in stocks depending on temperature variation while selling fuels to dealers through secret deals, insiders in the oil sector informed.
Those depot superintendents and employees involved in manipulation reportedly maintain links with dishonest officers of their respective oil companies and marketing and operation officials of BPC.
Postings at the terminals and depots are very lucrative for unethical income and so officials and employees are often found lobbying for such postings in exchange of kickbacks to the top management of the respective oil companies, one of the sources said.
-With New Age input
