By Abiola Olawale
Following controversies surrounding the pricing of the Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), popularly known as petrol refined by Dangote Refinery owned by Africa’s richest man and business mogul, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, the company has opened up on the real price for the most sought after commodity.
The Dangote Petroleum Refinery revealed that it set its ex-depot price of petrol at N990 per litre for sale into trucks, and N960 for ships, respectively.
This was revealed in a statement signed by its Group Chief Branding and Communications Officer, Anthony Chiejina.
The statement reads in part: “We have 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 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 to provide jobs and grow the economy. For example, the US and Europe have had to impose high tariffs on EVs and microchips to protect their domestic industries.”
This comes after Dangote had initially raised an alarm that despite having over 500 million litres of petrol available for sale, retailers are not buying his products.
However, the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN), in its reaction, said its members were unable to load petrol from the Dangote refinery for days.
The association later said it is more expensive to buy petrol from the refinery than other places.
