“Every drop of oil we export is from a legitimate source,” Mr Quincy Sintim-Aboagye, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Saltpond Offshore Producing Company Limited (SOPCL) told GNA on Sunday.
The CEO was reacting to a story carried in the August 22 edition of “The Wall Street Journal” of USA – “Tiny Ghana Oil Platform’s Big Output Sparks Scrutiny.”
The story alleged: “But since last August, three tankers picked up more than 470,000 barrels from Saltpond, transporting it to an Italian refinery near the Port of Genoa, according to port officials, ship-tracking services and port records.”
Mr Sintim-Aboagye denied that such quantities of oil were exported from Saltpond, and said the Company had not exported a single barrel of oil since February 2014; “the records are there for anybody who cares to see them.”
He emphasised that SOPCL did not have a “contract with Nigerian authorities to transship oil that the country’s law-enforcement officials have confiscated” as reported by “The Wall Street Journal.”
Mr Sintim-Aboagye explained that SOPCL blended “Low Pour Fuel Oil (LPFO) from legitimate suppliers with Saltpond oil to produce “The Saltpond Blend” and said the bad press was part of the ongoing campaign to get the Government to withdraw the Company’s operating licence.
Meanwhile, Emmanuel Oware, General Manager of Petro-Marine Consult Limited, based in Tema, who was quoted to have said small vessels that have loaded what he called ‘unofficial’ oil in Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta frequently come to discharge at Saltpond, told GNA that the Journalist obtained the information through subterfuge.
He denied having made such a categorical statement to that effect and said; “he might have pieced together what I said when he posed as a client who wanted to offer me a job and needed to know if I had knowledge about it.”
He said he did not know where the oil came from specifically to have said it came from the Niger Delta. “Ï do not know where they get their cargo from, it is a false statement.”
