The oil importers’ albatross

The perception of Lebanon’s oil importing companies as a cartel of money-making executives feeding off the backs of the people is an easy one to buy into, especially in an import-driven economy such as ours. But as any journalist knows, there are at least two sides to every story, if not many more. “We are always accused of being people that are making fortunes, which is not true,” pleads Dania Nakad, general manager of Wardieh Holdings (Wardieh) — the self-proclaimed largest Lebanese-owned private sector oil company — and the recently appointed vice president of the Association of Petroleum Importing Companies (APIC), the industry’s lobbying body. “During the war when the country was just a bunch of mafias and there was chaos everywhere you could say that the oil industry was a cartel, because there were two or three importers with control over the few ports,” she says, adding that such