A proposal made by the Ethiopian petroleum supply enterprise has been submitted to MoFED for approval

The Ethiopian government has shown an interest in joining the fuel distribution market in the country and has identified 60 of the 130 locations in which it plans to establish gas stations across the country.

Forty of the gas stations will be in Addis Abeba, according to Minister of Trade, Kebede Chane, who said his Ministry was involved in the study. The Ethiopian Petroleum Supply Enterprise (EPSE) has made the proposal and submitted it to the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development (MoFED), confirmed Demelash Alemu, assistant to the chief executive officer of the Enterprise.

The construction of the gas stations could begin in one year, added Kebede.

The EPSE has a monopoly on supplying fuel to distributors, buying from four international suppliers, including the Sudanese Sudan Petroleum Corporation and the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC).

According to Demelash, the EPSE still had no budget allocated for the proposed new business, expecting the budget to come from the MoFED, to which it is accountable. Meanwhile, the Enterprise had already asked for plots of land from the Addis Abeba administration, where some of the stations will be constructed, he added. The stations will have a capacity to store at least 250,000lt of fuel, said Demelash.

It is not yet clear whether the retail business will be undertaken by the EPSE itself or by a new body, Demelash said.

The business has been worrying to Tadesse Tilahun, CEO of National Oil Ethiopia (NOC), who expressed concern about the government as a wholesaler also retailing petroleum. The government should also allow private companies to import their own supply of fuel for the market chain in order to avoid imbalance and monopoly, he suggested.

NOC, which has 145 stations nationwide, is waiting for approval of its land applications, to enable it to open 10 additional gas stations in Addis Abeba.

“Our request for land to the City Administration of Addis Abeba has not received an answer for three years for unknown reasons,” said Tadesse.

Currently, there are 654 gas stations owned by nine distributors in the country. These are Oil Libya, Total, National Oil Ethiopia (NOC), Yetebaberut, Beherawi Petroleum (YBP), which accounts for 89pc of the total fuel distribution in the country and Kobil, Dalol Oil S.C., the Sudanese company Wadi Alsundus, and TAF Oil S.C., which account for the remaining 11pc.

EPSE was established in 2012 by the Council of Ministers Regulation No. 265/2012. It is an amalgamation of the Ethiopian Petroleum Enterprise (EPE) and the National Petroleum Depot Administration (NPDA).

The EPE, established in 1995, was the sole entity established to meet the country’s demand for petroleum, with the exception of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), bitumen products, and lubricants. It carries out the procurement of all other petroleum products through international competitive bids. The NPDA established in 1997, was an autonomous institution responsible for overseeing Ethiopia’s petroleum reserves to maintain the regular petroleum supply in case of interruption or shortage.


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