Kenya has been facing a fuel shortage. Many have suffered and prices moved through the roof. In places like Kisii, Kenyans were buying a liter of super petrol at 200 shillings while in Bungoma, a liter was going for 250 shillings.
As the situation got worse, tongues started wagging and Kenyans became divided as to what was the parent cause of the fuel shortage. Of course, this being a “political country”, politics set in and we started flowing and swimming in them.
The truth is, the fuel shortage in Kenya emanated from the fact that oil marketers had not received the fuel subsidy funds that had been promised to them by the National Treasury. We can comfortably blame this shortage on the National Treasury.
For those who don’t know, fuel subsidies are the payments made to OMCs by the government as a refund of the margins they forfeit at the pump price. The subsidy is paid from the petroleum stabilization fund.
Here is how it works; an Oil Marketing Company is a company registered and licensed to procure and sell petroleum products to bulk customers and the general public through retail stations.
At the same time, KPC is a parastatal owned by the government with the mandate of receiving refined petroleum products at the Kipevu oil storage facility and transporting these products from Mombasa through Nairobi to Western Kenya.
OMCs are required to collect their product allocation from KPC and transport it to their service stations. OMCs can only collect the petroleum quantities that have been allocated to them in the KPC system.
In all the noise about the fuel shortage, something came up; Kenyans brought in the issue of Rubis Kenya. Many wanted to know the person or companies that have shared in Rubis Kenya. Truth is Rubis Energy Kenya is fully 100 percent owned by Rubis in France.
