Major oil marketers are to begin the direct purchase of Premium Motor Spirit, popularly called petrol, from the Dangote Petroleum Refinery between Thursday and next week, NewsSpecng learnt.
This follows the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited pulling out as sole off-taker of the product from the $20bn plant.
The Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority is yet to release new petrol prices.
Meanwhile, oil marketers said the decision of NNPC to stop being the sole off-taker of petrol from the Dangote refinery means that the Federal Government has systematically stopped subsidy on petrol completely.
The Federal Government might have spent about N236bn monthly to subsidise petrol imported through NNPC and the one that was solely off-taken by NNPC from the Dangote Petroleum Refinery.
The report showed that NNPC was shouldering a subsidy of about N3.3bn daily on Dangote petrol, meaning in 30 days it might spend N99bn to subsidise Dangote petrol to marketers.
But by halting its position as the sole off-taker of Dangote petrol, the national oil company may save this sum.
The Federal Government had stated severally that only NNPC would off-take petrol from Dangote refinery after the company commenced the sale of PMS in September.
While stating that crude would be sold to Dangote in naira from October 1, the government, through the Federal Ministry of Finance in a recent statement, said, “In return, the Dangote refinery will supply PMS (petrol) and diesel of equivalent value to the domestic market to be paid in naira.
“Diesel will be sold in naira by the Dangote refinery to any interested off-taker. PMS will only be sold to NNPC. NNPC will then sell to various marketers for now. All associated regulatory costs (NPA, NIMASA, etc.) will also be paid in naira. We are also setting up a one-stop shop that will coordinate service provision from all regulatory agencies, security agencies, and other stakeholders to ensure a smooth implementation of this initiative.”
