This is coming at a time that almost the same technology, Project Aquila 2, which has been in existence, has failed to prevent fuel smuggling, diversion and ease payment of marketers.Controversy is trailing the federal government approval of N17 billion to be spent on a technology that will track movement of refined petroleum products, investigations by Daily Trust have shown.

The new technology is being implemented by the Petroleum Equalisation Fund Management Board, PEF(MB), an intervention agency experts said, has overstayed its functions with the failure of the equalization scheme.

The Federal Executive Council (FEC) in August last year approved N17 billion for the PEF(MB) to supervise the installation of a technology that will track refined petroleum product movement from vessels that come into Nigeria up until the products are discharged into trucks and then delivered to retail outlets.

The new technology called Downstream Automated Fuel Management Information System (DAFMIS) will, among others, mount sensors on fuel trucks which will generate near real time data about the origin and destination of the petroleum products. But multiple sources in the PEF(MB), Ministry of Petroleum Resources, and the downstream oil sector told our reporters that what was presented as N17bn to the FEC was almost the same technology solution called “Aquila 2”, an electronic loading and delivery system for petroleum products that was being test run by the agency at the cost of about N3bn.

The insiders said Aquila 2’s scope went beyond just tracking movement of petroleum product to also determine consumption pattern. One of the sources, who spoke to our reporter in confidence, said the PEF began implementing Aquila 2 in 2017 at about 13 filling stations across the country before it was controversially jettisoned for DAFMIS, “a project ten times the cost of Aquila 2.”

Another source said the amount approved for the DAFMIS project is outrageous with a lot of “unrelated IT and network infrastructure upgrade included in the scope of the DAFMIS so as to bloat the cost.” Details from a PEF(MB) 2016 budget document seen by Daily Trust show that N3bn out of the agency’s total budget of N7.169bn for 2016 was budgeted for “Design and testing of Aquila 2 solution.”

An insider said even in the agency’s 2017 budget, the same N3billion was budgeted “for the upgrade of current infrastructure and building of Aquila 2” and that “Everything Aquila 2 was not up to N3billion!” The source said the DAFMIS project is being executed in a clandestine manner without any transparency. Daily Trust attempts to obtain details on the new technology from PEF was not successful. “To date, nobody has seen the details of the new solution. Only the few people have details of what encompasses the over N16 billion solution that was taken to FEC for approval,” the source said.

Old wine in a new bottle It is not clear how the DAFMIS differs from Aquila 2 which the agency denied ever existed. But officials at the petroleum ministry have officially confirmed to Daily Trust the existence of Aquila 2 despite several denials by PEF officials. Request to the PEF for further information on the Aquila 2 and a breakdown of the N17bn cost to deploy the DAFMAS solution, has not been replied as at press time.

But investigations by the newspaper revealed that in 2011, the PEF(MB) launched the Aquila project to monitor the loading and delivery of petroleum products in all depots across the country and consequently speed up processing and payments of marketers’ claims.

Read more: https://www.dailytrust.com.ng/disquiet-over-pefs-n17bn-petrol-tracking-technology.html

Fraud everywhere.

Someone just want to full up his niche