THE Dangote Refinery said it has not fixed the price of its petrol product at N600 per litre, debunking media publications and dashing the hope of oil marketers of a price slash when it finally starts production.
A pump price of the premium motor spirit, otherwise known as petrol, has been selling for over N1,000 in many filling stations across Nigeria.
In a statement of Tuesday, August 13 its group’s chief branding and communications officer, Anthony Chiejina, stated that it had not fixed the petrol price.
According to Chiejina, the company’s attention was drawn to media reports announcing marketers’ projection of N600 per litre for Dangote petrol.
“We would like to clarify that the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) is not our business partner yet.
“We have never discussed the price of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) with them, and they have no mandate or authority to speak for us, either for good or with hidden transcript,” Chiejina said.
He urged the public to desist from such speculative announcements, adding, “We have our official channels through which we make our views known to our stakeholders.”
It was reported that IPMAN was hoping the Dangote refinery would sell at N600 or N650/litre when it started pumping petrol into the market.
According to the report, dealers under the aegis of the IPMAN believe the Dangote refinery would crash the price of petrol as it did with diesel.
It quoted IPMAN National Vice President Hammed Fashola to have said that the Dangote refinery would bring down the cost of fuel if it gets the needed support, especially crude supply.
While the Dangote refinery faces challenges getting crude oil supply locally and had been at loggerheads with with the regulators, its kick-off of petroleum production raises concerns over the Nigerian National Petrol Company’s (NNPCL) price-control regime, despite deregulation of the petroleum downstream sector.
The NNPCL has been enforcing a price-control regime that does not allow major marketers to enforce a market-driven price even when prices go up in the international market.
Analysts have argued that it was not clear whether Nigeria wants to practice regulated and deregulated markets at the same time.
The former chairman of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (Nigeria Council), Joe Nwakwue, had told The ICIR that with diesel, it was easy for the Dangote refinery to fix the price as the market was already there, fully deregulated.
Dangote had slashed the price of diesel when it entered the Nigerian market, but despite repeated announcements to start the production of petrol products, the refinery had faced a bit of delays.
It is almost mid-August, yet it is not certain whether the refinery will finally start petrol production this month.
Meanwhile, the N1,000 petrol price regime, mostly during the protest, was as a result of a glitch in supply occasioned by the recent nationwide “EndbadGovernance protest” which the public relations officer of IPMAN, Chined Ukadike said was a result of cautionary measure by marketers loading products to avoid possible attacks by ‘hoodlums’ under the guise of the protest.
“Note that the marketers sell according to the price and source of their products. Forces of demand and supply keep affecting prices as we are also in a deregulated petroleum regime. The marketers will also put their markup price, add the logistics price and sell. These are the reasons the prices at filling stations differ in a deregulated market,” Ukadike said.
He added that the prices could gradually drop as markers are now loading freely from depots with the official end of the nationwide protest.