The Ɗangote Refinery has dismissed claims by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) that it bought Premium Motor Spirit, a.k.a petrol, from its refinery at N898 per litre.
The company, which disclosed this in an issued press statement signed by its Group Chief Branding and Communications Office, Olufemi Soneye, denied claims that the national oil company purchased petrol at N898 per litre, saying it sold the priduct to NNPCL in dollars.
Recall that the NNPCL had recently alleged that buy the product from the Refinery at N898 per litre, suggesting that it is the sole off-taker of petrol products from the refinery and that it is using such to undermine the refinery from selling petrol to Nigerians at lower prices.
Lifting of petrol from the 650,000 barrels-per-day refinery reportedly commenced yesterday. No fewer than 300 trucks from the national oil firm arrived at the refinery, located in the Ibeju-Lekki area of Lagos State, to lift the first batch of petrol.
Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, at the Technical Sub-Committee meeting on the sale of crude oil to local refineries on Friday, had announced that NNPCL would be the sole off-taker of refined petrol from Ɗangote Refinery. He said diesel from the refinery would be sold in Naira to any interested off-taker.
Adedeji, who added that petrol would only be sold to NNPCL, which will then sell to various marketers, had also announced the completion of all agreements and modalities for the implementation of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) approval on the sale of crude to local refineries in Naira and the corresponding purchase of petroleum products in the same currency.
As at weekend, the product reportedly sold at N855 per litre at NNPCL retail stations in Lagos, and it was the cheapest anyone could buy the product while major marketers sold around N920. At independent marketers’ outlets, the petrol price was over N1,000. Elsewhere across the country, PMS sold for more than N1,200 per litre.
According to a Presidency source, the new arrangement from the NNPCL and Ɗangote Refinery negotiations, spanning more than one week, would allow Nigerians to get petrol at between N857 and N865 per litre, and represents an average under-recovery of about N130 to NNPCL.
President Bola Tinubu, the source, made it clear to the negotiating parties that “the price at which petrol would be sold to Nigerians should not be such that would place heavy financial burden on them while dealing with the new reality of the prevailing price”.
