Wednesday 30 / October / 2024
Muscat: A new concept is being introduced in the Sultanate by Oman Oil Marketing Company, which is currently undertaking a pilot project of mobile stations in Duqm, where a large number of construction and development projects involving plenty of heavy vehicles and machinery raises the demand for fuel.
With its trial in Duqm being a unanimous success, David Kalife, CEO of Oman Oil Marketing, says the company plans on opening more of these stations in the next few months.
“For the moment, we have them in Duqm, where we tested the concept,” said Kalife, in an exclusive interview with Times of Oman. “It was very important for us to make sure that it was working and that it was safe. We also wanted to see if there was additional demand in the market, and to see if we could improve it. All that has been now ticked and this is now going on.
“Not only have we improved the concept, but we have also received additional demand, so we have several big customers interested, and we will offer it in other cities later. The benefits are that it is portable, handy and an extra service given to customers when bringing our mobile filling station to their site. Customers can then manage their own fuel consumption with our help,” he added.
“We already have customers asking for it elsewhere, and it will be rolled out in the coming months. This mobile filling station is a mobile container, so it has the capacity of a container”. Kalife said that Oman’s mining and construction sectors would particularly benefit from this sort of setup.
Mining sector
“One of the industries which are keen on getting it is the mining sector, because you don’t have service stations up and down the country so, of course, they need it there and we are here to meet their needs,” he explained.
“What we do is listen to the customers and we find out what they need, and we are also trying to propose value added services before they even tell us what they need, so that we can better suit their requirements. This is exactly what we did with the double-sided fuel dispensers, which we have in over 40 service stations. We propose innovation, so this will be very useful in the mining and construction sectors because sometimes there are no filling stations near their operations,” said Kalife. “What we did is bring the fuel to customers’ premises, instead of asking customers to come to our service stations.”
Kalife added that there were other innovations Oman Oil Marketing were currently pursuing, as part of their expansion.
“We also have marine service stations,” he added. “We are looking to be everywhere, in terms of access, because we need to give our customers the possibility of coming and fueling up anywhere they need it. This kind of boating and marine fueling really matters to us. We are not only selling fuel through our retail network and conventional means, but we are selling fuel to other businesses.
“Marine and aviation are two of our fastest-growing business areas, and we have just successfully renewed our partnership with Oman Air,” said Kalife. “There was a big tender, and we were very proud to be awarded once again by Oman Air. We are very keen on developing Oman’s growth, not only by catering to trucks and cars, but also all other businesses that use and need fuel. At Oman Oil Marketing we delight our customers!”
