…Say they are unawares of the development
Sam Ikeotuonye
04 September 2017, Sweetcrude, Lagos – Nigeria’s oil marketers have debunked claims by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, of having crashed fuel prices across the country.
The NNPC said at the weekend that the price of petrol had dropped from N145 per litre to between N143 and N142 per litre in some stations in various parts of the country, going by a survey it conducted across the nation.
But, oil marketers under the umbrella of the Depot and Petroleum Products Marketers Association, DAPPMA, said they were unawares of the development.
Executive Secretary, DAPPMA, Olufemi Adewole, who disclosed this, said: “I’m not aware the price of petrol has crashed. My people are still selling at N145 per litre. So if the NNPC has crashed its price, it doesn’t have the overhead that we have; it is not repaying loans to banks like we are paying and government is not owing the NNPC like it owns us”.
He stated that the oil marketers and the NNPC were operating in the same market but that the national oil company had several other advantages over the oil marketers.
“We are operating in the same market but different conditions. Maybe they (NNPC) crashed the PMS price in their own petrol stations,” he said, adding: “Government owes marketers foreign exchange and interest on loan repayment for the past two years. Is it these marketers that will now sell at a price that they cannot get the product?”
Maintaining that DAPPMA members were selling at the official price of N145 per litre, Adewole said NNPC could afford to sell at lower prices because it is not being owed by government and is not buying foreign exchange to import products.
“My own people in DAPPMA are selling at N145 per litre and that is the official market price. If the NNPC is selling at a lower price, you should know that the NNPC is not being owed by government; it is not going to banks to borrow money that it has to pay interest on when repaying. Also, the NNPC is not buying foreign exchange to import products,” he stressed.
