The oil marketers gave the hint in Lagos at the just-concluded Oil Trading and Logistics, OTL Africa Downstream Expo, where they expressed their frustration over the return of a regulated petrol pricing regime amid rising landing costs, and shortage of foreign exchange.
Moderating one of the panel sessions with the topic: “Africa Fuels Update -Overview of Trends and Market Development”, Chief Operating Officer of Pinnacle Oil and Gas Limited, Mrs. Adenike Labanjo, raised the alarm over the looming price hike when she posed a question to the Executive Vice President (Downstream) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC), Mr. Adedapo Segun.
She argued that the rising cost of sourcing petrol had become more unbearable to the marketers than the NNPC due to the imbalance in foreign exchange accessibility that favors the national oil company more than the private marketers.
She added that the challenge faced by the marketers in the importation of petrol at the beginning of the deregulation pronouncement was that the market moved against them due to the volatile nature of FX or due to the inability of some marketers to lock their cargoes at the time.
In his submission, the Executive Director of Northwest Petroleum and Gas Company Limited, Dr Mohammed Salaudeen, said the high cost of sourcing petrol had led to the shutting down of 90 per cent of petrol depots nationwide.
He lamented that the cost of buying a 10,000-metric tonne of petrol locally from the NNPC and others had surged to N7 billion, up from below half of that amount last year.