Osamagbe Imadiyi.
According to oil marketers, the cost of Premium Motor Spirit, also known as petrol, which was produced by the Dangote Petroleum Refinery and made available for purchase by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited on Monday, may make it worthwhile to import the product into Nigeria.
In addition, dealers demanded transparency in the pricing of the PMS produced by the Dangote refinery and said that ships carrying foreign gasoline should begin arriving in Nigeria on Tuesday, or today. The $20 billion refinery located in Lekki was the only off-taker of gasoline from NNPC, a role that the Organised Private Sector criticized. They demanded competition in the market, pointing out that NNPC’s exclusive off-taker status would prevent this from happening.
NNPC declared on Monday that it would charge more than N1,000 per litre in the far north for gasoline that was removed from the Dangote refinery. The company’s spokesperson, Olufemi Soneye, released an estimate of the pump prices of PMS from Dangote Refinery based on pricing in September 2024 in a statement. According to Soneye, the cost might reach N1,019 per liter in Borno State and N999.22 in Abuja, Sokoto, Kano, and other places.
In Oyo, Rivers, and other southern regions, a liter will set you back N960. According to an infographic published by the NNPC, the lowest price in Lagos and its surrounding areas is N950. Several oil marketers predicted that the high cost of the NNPC-released Dangote gasoline would stimulate imports of the product, given that some PMS vessels may arrive in Nigeria today (Tuesday).