UNP’s handing over of tank farm similar to the CFA – Susil

March 25, 2013, 10:00 pm


by Dasun Edirisinghe

The handing over of Ceylon Petroleum Corporation-owned oil tank farm in Trincomalee to India, by the then UNP government, was very similar to the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement between the UNF government and the LTTE, Environment and Renewable Energy Minister Susil Premajayantha said.



He said that the UNP was now criticising the government and asking it to work against India after the Indian government voted in favour of the US sponsored resolution against Sri Lanka at the UNHRC last week.

"The then UNF government handed over 102 oil tanks and 600 acres of land in Trincomalee to the Indian Oil Corporation," former Minister of Petroleum Industries, Premajayantha said.

He said the CPC was currently handling the major share of the oil market in Sri Lanka.

Premajayantha said that Indian Oil Corporation could earn millions more in profits by selling fuel in Pune, one main city in India, than from entire Sri Lanka, but they came here not so much to earn profits, but to establish a link in Sri Lanka.

"The then UNF government facilitated them by handing over the Trinco tank farm to IOC," he said.

Answering a query on the rumour that the Petroleum Industries Ministry had prepared a cabinet paper to take back the Trinco oil tank farm, Premajayantha said there was no truth in that.

Newly appointed Minister of Petroleum Industries Anura Priyadarshana Yapa also denied that the government planned to take back the Trinco tank farm.

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