Olusegun Ariyo
Dangote Refinery has finally made its petrol prices public following the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, IPMAN, and Petroleum Products Retail Outlets Owners Association of Nigeria, PETROAN, claimed.
Urban Express News Online reports that there have been conflicting reports over the price of fuel from Dangote Refinery.
IPMAN and PETROAN had earlier claimed to be importing petrol products at cheaper rates compared to Dangote price.
Reacting to the claim in an official statement signed by its Group Chief Branding and Communications Officer, Anthony Chiejina, on Sunday evening, the refinery disclosed that its petroleum products are sold to trucks at N990 per litre and N960 per litre into ships.
According to the statement: “We had lately refrained from engaging in media fights, but we are constrained to respond to the recent misinformation being circulated by IPMAN, PETROAN, and other associations.
“Both organisations claim that they can import PMS at lower prices than what is being sold by the Dangote Refinery. We benchmark our prices against international prices and we believe our prices are competitive relative to the price of imports. If anyone claims they can land PMS at a price cheaper than what we are selling, then they are importing substandard products and conniving with international traders to dump low-quality products into the country. without concern for the health of Nigerians or the longevity of their vehicles. Unfortunately, the regulator (NMDPRA) does not even have laboratory facilities which can be used to detect substandard products when imported into the country.
“Post deregulation, NNPC set the pace by selling PMS to domestic marketers at N971 per litre for sale into ships and at N990 for sale into trucks. This set the benchmark for our pricing and we have even gone lower to sell at N960 per litre for sale into ships while maintaining N990 per litre for sale into trucks.
“In good faith, and in the interest of the country, we commenced sales at these prices without clarity on the exchange rate that we will use to pay for the crude purchase.
“At the same time, an international trading company has recently hired a depot facility next to the Dangote Refinery, with the objective of using it to blend substandard products that will be dumped into the market to compete with Dangote Refinery’s higher quality production.
“This is detrimental to the growth of domestic refining in Nigeria. We should point out that it is not unusual for countries to protect their domestic industries in order to provide jobs and grow the economy. For example, the US and Europe have had to impose high tariffs on EVs and microchips in order to protect their domestic industries.
“While we continue with our determination to provide affordable, good quality, domestically refined petroleum products in Nigeria, we call on the public to disregard the deliberate disinformation being circulated by agents of people who prefer for us to continue to export jobs and import poverty.”
