The President, Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, Chinedu Okoronkwo, has said members have started buying Premium Motor Spirit, also known as petrol, at N108 ex-depot price as announced by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.
Okoronkwo made this known in an Interview with newsmen News Agency of Nigeria in Abuja on Sunday.
It would be recalled that NNPC had on May 6 announced a reduction in the ex-depot price of PMS from N113.28k per litre to N108.00k per litre across all its products loading facilities.
Ex-depot price is the price at which the depot owners sell the commodity to retail outlets across the country.
Okoronkwo said the development was welcomed and seen as a partial deregulation of the downstream oil sector.
According to him, the marketers are currently planning to start importation of petroleum products in the country and that if the sector is properly deregulated, it will help to drive price of the product.
“When the market opens, marketers will go and buy products and come home and sell,” he said.
The IPMAN president said the current development had brought to fore the need to revamp the nation’s refineries to boost local refining capacity.
He called for investments in construction of modular refineries, urging the Federal Government to ensure that the three major refineries in the country were rehabilitated.
However, the National President, Petroleum Products Retail Outlets Owners Association of Nigeria, Dr. Billy Gillis-Harry, said their members were still buying the product at the old price of N113.
Gillis-Harry said: “First, N108 per litre had been announced by the PPMC as ex-depot price; we have the communication both from the PPMC and the PPPRA.
“But the reality is that there is no implementation of that as it is today.
Gilly-Harry noted that after the new ex-depot price, the PPPRA had not issued a band at which marketers could sell the pump price.
“We today will assume that there is some level of partial deregulation by this process.”
Gillis-Harry also said that marketers in the nearest future might venture into importation.
He said: “We form highest base of clients for petroleum ex-depot purchases.
“This is because it is our members that form IPMAN, major marketers, NNPC Retails outlets.
“If we do not have products from NNPC, we would fall back to DAPPMA members.
