Oil marketers on Sunday gave reasons why fuel scarcity will persist. According to them, they claim that the Premium Motor Spirit, PMS, charges were becoming unbearable for the Nigerian National Petroleum Company, NNPC, being the sole importers of the commodity.
The Oil Marketers who made this disclosure further revealed that the trend was that the NNPC had been subtly pushing these charges to the depot owners, who in turn transfer the charges to the filling stations, which on their part push the cost to the final consumers, thus leading to the increase in the pump price of the commodity.
Analysts suggest that with the subtle removal of subsidy the NNPC might end up selling the PMS for four hundred naira per litre, at the lowest.
Following the nationwide scarcity of the petroleum product, federal government tacitly approved that depot owners raise the pump price of petrol to N185 per litre even though the official price had been pegged at much lower price of N147/litre.
“The dollar is affecting PMS purchase, something you were buying for about $15/tonne when the dollar was about N440 to N450, but currently the dollar is about N750 to N800. Definitely the price of the product will increase,” a major marketer, who pleaded anonymity, said
According to him, “You can buy a product, say $10/tonne from maybe Russia, it will get to Nigerian waters at that rate, but most of those mother vessels, as soon as they discharge into your own vessel, whatever rate you now pay will be international rates in dollar.
“The mother vessel has its limit, it has to be stationed at Atlas Cove. But the daughter vessel you are going to charge, which brings in the product, will be charged in dollars. They don’t take naira. So all these charges come in dollars.”
The source stated that these charges were currently hitting hard on the NNPC, as the oil company was finding it tough to bear the increased fuel imports’ rates.
“All vessels operate on international rates and it must be in forex. So as it is now, the rates are getting so high for NNPC to bear alone. Some of these charges have to be pushed to depots that are taking the products and they have to pass it on to consumers,” the oil marketer stated.