We can’t sell petrol at N125/litre despite NNPC orders – Marketers

On Wednesday, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) announced that the fuel pumps at its retail stations will be adjusted to N125 per litre. However, Private fuel marketers are yet to reduce the pump price of Premium Motor Spirit (petrol), while retail stations belonging to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation have started selling at N125 per litre.

A PUNCH correspondent, who visited several filling stations including Oando, Mobil and Capital Oil and Gas on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway as well as Total at Ikosi-Ketu, on Thursday morning, observed that the private marketers were selling at N145 per litre of petrol.

“What we are asking the government is that: who is going to pay us between the old price and the new price on our old stock? And without them verifying our old stock and telling us what they will pay us and when they will pay us, we will not load,” a top official of one of the fuel marketers’ associations told our correspondent on condition of anonymity.

He said marketers would continue to sell the product at the old rate pending when the issues would be resolved.

“Marketers are holding their strategy session. We will have a common front. The GMD (of NNPC) has invited us for a stakeholders’ meeting, which should have been done before the announcement of the new price. By the end of today, we will have a clearer picture of how they are going to involve us,” he added.

The Federal Government had noted on Wednesday that the drop in crude oil prices had lowered the expected open market price of imported petrol below the official pump price of N145 per litre.

“Therefore, Mr President has approved that Nigerians should benefit from the reduction in the price of PMS which is a direct effect of the crash in global crude oil prices,” the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Sylva, said in a statement.

He said the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency would subsequently issue a monthly guide to the NNPC and marketers on the appropriate pricing regime.

The NNPC, on Wednesday, directed all its retail station to change the retail pump price to N125 per litre from N145.

The Group Managing Director, NNPC, Mallam Mele Kyari, said the corporation had reviewed its ex-coastal, ex-depot and NNPC retail pump prices in compliance with the directives of the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Sylva, on the pricing of PMS.

He said, “Effective March 19, 2020, NNPC ex-coastal price for PMS has been reviewed downwards from N117.6/litre to N99.44/litre while the ex-depot price is reduced from N133.28/litre to N113.28/litre.

“These reductions will, therefore, translate to N125/litre retail pump price. Despite the obvious cost implication of this immediate adjustment to the corporation, NNPC is delighted to effect this massive reduction of N20/litre for the benefit of all Nigerians.”