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The Addis Abeba Caretaker Administration lease board
provided three plots for Nile Petroleum Company (NPC),
a state-owned Sudanese company, for building filling
stations. The decision from the Lease Board came on
November 28, 2007 after a meeting was held at the
municipality.
One of the three sites requested by NPC is found in
Bole District, Kebelle 28/01 (2,348sqm), and will be
leased at a price of 287.45 Br per square metre. The
second is in Nifas-Silk Lafto District, Kebelle
23/10, (2,469sqm) at a cost of 903 Br per square
metre, and the third one is found in the same
District, Kebelle 23/14 (2,063sqm), and will be
granted at the cost of 287.45 Br for each square
metre.
NPC requested the plots of land on May 25, 2007 and
has deposited 650,000 Br in a blocked account in
accordance with the city investment directive. In
its regular meeting that took place in October 2004,
the Council of Ministries decided that the petroleum
sector should be open for local and international
companies to mitigate the fuel distribution problems
in the country.
Since then, three petroleum companies have entered
the market: National Oil Company, Yetebaberut
Biherawi Petroleum and Kobil. The fourth foreign
petroleum company set to operate from Ethiopia will
be NPC.
Over the past four decades, four such petroleum
companies like Shell, TOTAL, Agip and Mobil have
taken the lion's share of the market before the new
entrants made their way. However, Agip and Mobil
have closed their offices in Ethiopia, while others
still remain in business in Ethiopia.
NPC, a company that does refining, storing, and
marketing of the petroleum products in the Sudan,
first entered Ethiopia in 2003.
The Sudanese petroleum company already secured
20,000sqm of land for the construction of fuel
depots in Sululta, Oromia Regional State, 24km north
of Addis Abeba. Once the construction is finalised,
NPC will have depots with capacity to store 300tn of
LPG and 1,500 cubic metres of petroleum. The latest
grant has delighted executives of the company, who
were frustrated with the delay of the consideration
of their request.
"The move is definitely good," Sharaf Eldin Babkir,
general manager of NPC, Ethiopia, told Fortune.
NPC was first established in 1954 under the name
Nile Import and Trading Oil Company, subsidiary of
TOTAL. The government of Sudan had 75pc of the share
in this company until 1993.
Since NPC was nationalized in 1993, the company has
come to dominate 55pc of the Sudanese petroleum
market for distribution.
One member of the lease board told Fortune that
although the 12 plots requested by NPC have not been
made available as quickly as the company would like,
the city administration is doing its best to find
affordable plots.
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