By Frankline Sunday
State-owned oil marketer, National Oil Corporation (NOCK), is reaching out to the private sector in a bid to advance its expansion strategy in the competitive petroleum sector.
NOCK on Friday invited bids from landowners and developers along major roads and highways to partner in setting up NOCK branded petrol stations. The move by NOCK is part of its strategy that aims to have the marketer push its retail network from the current 107 to 165 outlets by end of this year.
Over the past three years, NOCK has been struggling to grow its market share in the Kenyan economy, 70 per cent of which is dominated by multinational petroleum marketers.
Data from the Petroleum Institute of East Africa (PIEA) puts the market share of the State-run petroleum marketer at over seven per cent, becoming one of the largest local dealers in the country.
Lately, NOCK has embarked on an aggressive expansion programme to increase its footprint in the country and double its market share and is planning to make use of enacted law on private public partnerships to achieve this feat.
“There are several models for partnerships and these include the outright sale or leasing of the piece of land to NOCK for the construction of service stations,” states the marketer in a statement on its website.
“The other model will see the land owner cost share with National Oil to either build the service station or install a mobile service station.”
Developers can also choose to fully invest in putting up the service station with NOCK assisting them to acquire funding for construction or purchase of the mobile service station.
Last year, NOCK indicated that it would be reaching out to oil producing countries to get government-to-government contracts that are deemed more cost effective and with higher profit margins.
This will see the marketer increase its import quota at the same time offer its products to consumers at competitive prices, thus giving established marketers like Total and KennolKobil a run for their money.
Business leaders across various industries as well as individual consumers have repeatedly raised concern about the high cost of energy.
