Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency, PPPRA, has said there was no plan to increase the official price of petrol in the country.
Sotonye Iyoyo, who is the Acting Executive Secretary of PPPRA, disclosed this in a statement. He said the agency would retain the retail prices of N86 for the NNPC, and N86.50 for the other marketing companies.
The agency added that the pump price of Household Kerosene, HHK, would also remain unchanged from what it was in the last quarter. “Therefore, marketers are advised to ensure that there is no price distortion in their respective retail outlets,” the PPPRA stated.
The agency said it would continue to monitor the global oil market performances and make reasonable changes consistent with the newly-adopted price modulation principles.
The second quarter petrol import allocations has been awarded by The Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency last week, with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation given 41.7 per cent and private marketers 58.3 per cent of the national consumption.
In Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial nerve center, many filling stations are yet to open for business on Sunday, while those who sold the product had long queues of frantic motorists to deal with.
Yesterday, The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, disclosed that a number of international oil companies, IOCs, in the upstream oil and gas sector have agreed to provide foreign exchange for oil marketing companies for the importation of premium motor spirit, also known as petrol.
While speaking during a tour of petrol stations in Abuja, the Chief Operations Officer in charge of the downstream sector at the NNPC, Mr. Henry Ikem-Obih, also reiterated that before the end of April, all the refineries would resume production and begin to contribute positively to improving the fuel scarcity currently facing the country,
He said: “As you know, forex was one of the prime reasons we did not do well in the first quarter. Most marketers, who had allocation, could not import because they do not have forex.
“The minister has worked very closely through his initiative with the upstream oil companies. So, we have a number of them on board to support local entities, that is, downstream companies.
“They will help provide foreign exchange for them to import and meet their Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency, PPPRA, allocations. Through the CBN, NNPC would support importation of fuel in the second quarter. “These oil companies also would work with us, including the CBN. These combined efforts, we hope, would enable us meet a 100 per cent of import requirement for the second quarter.”
On the refineries, Ikem-Obih stated that all the refineries were at various stages of start-up, in terms of moving them closer to their optimal yield, while he expressed optimism that within the month of April, part of the fuel purchased by Nigerians from petrol stations would be produced locally from the refineries.
He said: “Most of the work that is being done at the refineries is on site, just getting them to start up and start cracking, so that they too should start contributing to the amount of fuel we have to distribute across Nigeria.
“It is our goal to ensure that within the month of April, we will have some local refining contributing to the amount of fuel we have to distribute across the country.”
To end the prolonged fuel crisis, he also disclosed that the NNPC had stepped up fuel imports, while also recovering most of the pipelines to ensure a smooth distribution of the product across the country.
According to the Executive Secretary, Depots and Petroleum Products Marketers Association, Mr. Olufemi Adewole, the NNPC had assured the marketers that foreign exchange would be provided for them through the Central Bank of Nigeria.
He said, “As soon as that is released, our people will start importing. If our letters of credit are not backed by adequate foreign exchange, our international supplier will not oblige us. We are still owing them foreign exchange for deliveries made to us between September 2014 and December last year.
“Government has given us the naira, but we don’t have forex to pay them. Right now, what they have decided is that if we want to buy anything from them, we should bring forex. And the NNPC has assured us that they will give us. Once they give us forex, our suppliers will release cargos to us.”
On the increased allocation to the marketers for the second quarter, the Chairman, Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers, Lagos Zone, Alhaji Tokunbo Korodo, described it as a welcome development.
“I think it will create the enabling environment for the marketers to contribute their quota to the supply. But the most important thing is that the government should make forex available to them as they promised so that we can bring this scarcity to an end.”
He stressed the need for mass importation of the product to solve the supply challenge currently facing the country.
