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| Sunday, 6 April 2003 |
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Business |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Third party for petroleum distribution? by Elmo Leonard A third player is expected to commence domestic distribution of petroleum by July or August, adding further competition to what is presently almost a monopoly of Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC), CPC Chairman Daham Wimalasena said. The second player is the Indian Oil Company (IOC). The Indians are currently busy wooing gas station holders to convert to the distribution of oil which will flow off the Trincomalee oil tanks. The owners of around 60 petroleum stations island-wide have agreed to be IOC agents, the Sunday Observer reliably learns. It would mean that these gas station dealers will forfeit their dealerships for CPC petroleum, it was said at the 31st Annual General Meeting of the Petroleum Dealers' Association, held last week. The third player, who would take up the distribution of petroleum within the island, is yet unknown. The authorities said that the information would appear on the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE). The Sunday Observer reliably learns that a few conglomerates trading on the CSE as diversified holdings are competing for the job. Where the third player would get its stocks of petroleum is also not known. The removal of the monopoly in the distribution of petroleum, held by the CPC from the 1960s, would be good for the dealer and the consumer, Wimalasena aid. Minister of Power and Energy Karu Jayasuriya described the CPC as a national treasure, and said that the move to end the CPC monopoly would not mean its destruction. |
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