In light of the ongoing hydrocarbons crisis in Morocco, the Executive Office of the National Petroleum Refinery Front (FNP) has demanded the rescue of “SAMIR” firm in difficulty which will lead to price regulation and restore national storage capacity. “SAMIR” is one of the main oil refineries in Africa and Morocco’s only one, located in the city of Mohammedia.
Barlaman Today learned that the president of the Front, Al-Hussein Al-Yamani, emphasized in a letter that he sent to Akhannouch, the Head of Government and majority owner of Akwa Group, the need “to put fuels back in the list of regulated goods at a time where stakeholders are hindering free competition on the market and go back to setting prices for public sale in a way that guarantees reasonable profits from stakeholders and takes into consideration the purchasing power of small and big consumer and the creation of a new mechanism in order to support and compensate the damage caused by the fuels high prices as many countries have done, in addition to recovering the outrageous profits accumulated by some companies since the price fluctuation at the end of 2015.”
According to Al Yamani, these demands come “as a result of the direct and indirect negative repercussions of the high prices of fuels on citizens’ living standards, stability and social peace, as well as on the basic balances of companies that use hydrocarbons in transport, agriculture, industry and others.”
Al Yamani stated that it also comes on the basis of “the important gains generated by the petroleum refining industries in consolidating energy security and preserving the foreign reserves by purchasing crude oil instead of finished products, to seize the opportunity of high refining prices, to create conditions of competition that have been absent so far in the Moroccan market, and to reduce prices and preserve the social and developmental benefits of the industry.”
The National Petroleum Refinery Front (FNP) also called for “seizing the opportunity of the high profits of the petroleum refining industries in order to preserve the multiple advantages of these industries by facilitating the judicial transfer of SAMIR, which is being submitted for judicial liquidation, in order to resume urgently oil refining in Mohammedia in any possible way, such as the clearing of public funds involved in the indebtedness of the company by the state, and the protection against loss of national wealth represented by the physical assets and human resources of the company.”
The case of SAMIR is that of pure investment and “must be treated reasonably, with the need to develop a clear vision in terms of management and consideration of the interests of the Moroccan state as a potential investor, the company’s workforce and the inhabitants of the city of Mohammedia.