The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC) has confirmed purchasing petrol from the Dangote Refinery at N898 per litre, dismissing reports quoting varying prices from N760/litre to N1,300/litre.
This follows the loading of over 70 trucks from the 650,000-barrel-per-day refinery in Lagos on Sunday, marking the refinery’s first distribution of petrol.
Speaking to ARISE News Digital on Sunday, Olufemi Soneye, Chief Spokesperson for NNPC, clarified, “For this initial loading today (Sunday), the price from the refinery was N898 per litre.”
Responding to why the NNPC should still be the sole offtaker when the price from the Dangote Refinery is lower than prices in many locations across the country, Soneye referred to a previous statement where the NNPC said that Dangote Refinery is free to sell to other marketers on a willing buyer-willing seller basis.
The past statement had read, “The NNPC Ltd will only fully offtake PMS from the DRL (Dangote Refinery) if the market prices of PMS are higher than the pump prices in Nigeria. The DRL and any other domestic refinery are free to sell directly to any marketer on a willing buyer, willing seller basis, which is the current practice for all fully deregulated products.
“NNPC Ltd has no desire or intention to become the distributor for any entity in a free market environment, and therefore, the notion of becoming a sole offtaker does not arise.”
Soneye explained why players (both buyers and sellers) hitherto did not reveal prices up until now with different prices being bandied around.
The NNPC spokesman said that coming out to state a particular price could be counterproductive because the prices are market driven and are bound to increase or decrease depending on the price of crude in the international market.
However, he found it necessary to confirm to ARISE News how much NNPC bought petrol from Dangote on Sunday because different media outlets were quoting false rates. He however reiterated that the price is just for the present and will not necessarily be so in the coming days.
However, it has still not been revealed how much the NNPC will sell petrol to marketers if it intends to mantain its N897 recommended retail price.
Some economic confidantes of President Bola Tinubu are reportedly urging a cap on prices at the current rate advertised by the NNPC, as the citizenry groan under rising commodity costs.
This suggests that there will still be some form of subsidy to keep prices at the previously announced rate, otherwise petrol prices in Nigeria are bound to rise in the next few days.
Ozioma Samuel-Ugwuezi
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