Federal Government To Shut Errant Filling Stations As Petrol Hits N1,000/Litre -

Many filling stations operated by independent oil marketers have now fixed the pump prices of Premium Motor Spirit, popularly called petrol, at between N900 and N1,000/litre Owners of these stations seem not to care about the cost of the product at retail outlets operated by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Petrol prices at NNPC stations range from N568 to N617/litre.

This often leads to queues at the stations as Nigerians raise concerns about the high cost of the commodity by independent petrol dealers, the Federal Government has also vowed to shut down filling stations that will be caught dispensing PMS at exorbitant rates.

It declared this through the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority, stressing that it was not in the interest of Nigerians for marketers to profiteer in the sales of PMS Independent oil marketers claimed that they’ve been buying petrol from private depot owners for as high as N850/litre since last week and that this was why the pump prices were high.

However, the spokesperson of the NMDPRA, George Ene-Ita, argued that the petrol price reports that the regulator gets from its officials at the depots were different our depot people see a different price because we ask them to publish the prices at the depots every day and it is not N850/litre. Our field agents at the depots give us a different figure,” he said.

When told that some filling stations operated by independent marketers in Lagos and many other states dispense their products for as high as N900 and N1,000/litre, the NMDPRA official said such outlets would be brought to book if apprehended If we get these outlets, all we do is to try and shut them down, because NNPC is the company that brings in the product and they tell us how much they sell as their ex-depot prices to off-takers.

And we sit down together and work out the margins and there is no way it should be that high,” Ene-Ita declared the NMDPRA official further noted that there was no way the agency could reconcile the high cost of petrol sold by independent marketers.