-Deborah Akinyosoye
The Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) has given reasons oil marketers can not buy premium motor spirit (PMS), also known as petrol, directly from the Dangote Petroleum Refinery.
Festus Osifo, president of the association, during a press conference in Lagos on Tuesday, said one of the reasons is that petrol prices will rise beyond the current level, as oil marketers will sell without subsidy.
On September 14, the federal government said Dangote refinery will sell petrol to only the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited, adding that interested marketers would have to buy the product from the national oil firm.
The next day, NNPC started lifting petrol from the Dangote refinery after a protracted period of price negotiations.
At the close of loading on the same day, NNPC said it bought PMS from Dangote refinery at N898 per litre.
However, the Dangote refinery countered the claim, describing it as “both misleading and mischievous”.
Clarifying the pricing, NNPC said petrol would be sold at N950.22 per litre across all its retail outlets in Lagos, while residents in the northern part of Nigeria will pay more for the product, with those in Borno expected to pay the highest petrol pump price of N1,019.22.
Speaking on the issue, Osifo said the NNPC was the sole buyer of petrol from Dangote refinery because the company was “putting some form of subsidy” on the product.
“NNPC takes the product at N950 per litre. They would now offer it to marketers around over N700 because if they offer it at N950, we will be buying premium motor spirit (PMS) today at about N1,100 to N1,200 official price, even across NNPC retail stations,” he said.
“What that means is that NNPC buys it at a cost, but they would go back and put some level of subsidy in it.
“That is the reason why other marketers can not go today to Dangote refinery to buy.”
He said the national oil company is not preventing other marketers from lifting the product from the refinery.
“If NNPC is buying at N950 per litre from Dangote with all the cost inputed in it and they are now selling at N700 plus to marketers, it means that there is a shortfall that NNPC is managing,” Osifo said.
“But if you ask TotalEnergies, for example, to buy from Dangote, TotalEnergies would buy from Dangote at almost the same price but TotalEnergies would sell to marketers at maybe N1,000 plus.”
He said this means that petrol sold by NNPC to other marketers would be cheaper and that from TotalEnergies, much more expensive.
“That is why they (marketers) are staying away. It is not that NNPC wants to be monopolistic,” he said.