NOSDRA tasks oil marketers on environmental pollution

The National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency, NOSDRA, has said it would begin the enforcement of laws on oil marketers in the downstream petroleum sector next month.

NOSDRA Director-General, Idris Musa, who stated this at a meeting with Depot and Petroleum Products Marketers Association of Nigeria (DAPPMAN) in Abuja, stressed that extant environmental protection laws in the downstream petroleum were vital.
 
He also explained that “By the next month, our officers will be on the field to enforce compliance and before then we would have finished with the two other groups of operators in the downstream oil sector.

According to him, they include the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, IPMAN and Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria, MOMAN. “So nobody will say we were not told or carried along in effecting of the laws.”
 
“However, NOSDRA is going to pass the information through its executive bodies who will be able to disseminate this to its members across the 774 local governments in Nigeria.”
 
Musa further maintained that the government, through this initiative, would curb all forms of pollution of groundwater caused by pollutants from the facilities of oil marketing firms nationwide.
 
“For the boreholes that are already being polluted, we are putting a check to those things that make it possible for the groundwater to be polluted. Once we guide the operators properly, they will know what to do.”
 
Musa however, declared: “people should be more cautious and operators must be aware of the need to keep their operations in a way that will not pollute the environment.
 
“There would be sanctions against defaulters because NOSDRA wants to implement the existing laws, and not primarily aimed at sanctioning or penalising operators, but defaulters would face the consequences.”

Earlier, the Executive Secretary, DAPPMAN, Olufemi Adewole, urged the federal government not to over-burden oil marketers with excess levies and taxes, adding that the new move should not end up as a disturbance to marketers.