President Olusegun Obasanjo has directed the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to carry out a comprehensive investigation into the alleged fuel import racket that cost the corporation huge sums of money in foreign exchange. The president also directed the corporation to recover from oil trading companies and their collaborators in the Pipelines and Products Marketing Company (PPMC), a subsidiary of the NNPC, the total sum of $143 million. The NNPC, which received the report of the committee set up to investigate the rising cost of demurrage paid by the NNPC on its imported fuel cargoes and the mounting debts owed the corporation by major oil marketers, had already sacked seven senior officials mostly from the PPMC.