Petrol: NNPC summons stakeholders as landing cost hits N180/litre

A new price of petrol may soon be announced anytime soon as the landing cost of the product has risen from N151 to N180 per litre, due to crude oil price increase in the international market.

The rise of crude oil price from $58 to more than $63 per barrel on Monday came with refiners incurring additional cost in procuring, refining and supplying petrol to consumers..

The petrol pump price may rise from N162 to N190 per litre when the marketers’ margins and other considerations are added, according to industry analysts.

Already, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation has summoned the major marketers, independent marketers and other stakeholders to a crucial meeting on the issue. Stakeholders are said to be generally opposed to further increase in price so as not to harm the nation’s economy.

The NNPC would therefore continue to bear the burden of subsidy as the government did not make provision for it in the 2021 budget.

Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Sylva, said at a forum last week that citizens should be ready to bear the pains of increased petrol pump price. That was when the crude oil price climbed to $60 per barrel.

Timipre Sylva, giving a speech at the Nigerian Upstream Cost Optimisation Programme February 9, said the NNPC could not continue to bear the burden of rising oil prices.

He said, “Since we are optimising everything, the NNPC needs to also think about the optimization of product cost because as we all know oil prices are where they are today, $60. “As desirable as this is, this has serious consequences as well on product prices. So, we want to take the pleasure and we should as a country be ready to take the pain.”

The Nigeria Labour Congress told the Federal Government to drop the idea of imposing another petrol pump price hike on Nigerians.

President of the NLC, Ayuba Wabba, said, “I am not sure Nigerians would be ready to bear any more pain at this time because of the fact that a lot of factors have affected the economic, social and even the well being of Nigerians.

“So, any additional pain at this point in time certainly will not be taken lightly. As you are aware, the NLC said it would have to discuss even the issue of technical report on the September 2020 increase which we could not adopt at the last meeting of the National Executive Council. Certainly, it’s a thing that we cannot swallow.”