Thursday, October 17, 2024 -Oil marketers have stated that the amount of Premium Motor Spirit, commonly known as petrol, produced by the Dangote Petroleum Refinery is currently insufficient to meet domestic demand.
Based on this, dealers are to import the commodity to augment the supply
from the $20bn Lekki-based plant, the marketers stated on Tuesday.
They aligned with the Trade Union Congress to demand that the refinery ramp up
production, as some alleged that the plant was producing about 10 million
litres of petrol daily, as against the 25 million litres that it earlier
promised to produce.
On September 15, when the refinery commenced the release of PMS to the domestic
marketer, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited announced that it
(NNPCL) was to load 16.8 million litres of petrol from the Dangote refinery.
This was in contrast to the 25 million litres that the refinery had
announced earlier it would release to the national oil company daily.
On September 3, 2024, the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum
Regulatory Authority disclosed that the refinery would supply 25 million litres
of petrol to the Nigerian market daily starting from September.
It added that this would rise to 30 million litres from September. In a short
statement, the NMDPRA said it met with NNPC to agree on local crude supply to
the refinery.
“At the NMDPRA headquarters in Abuja, NNPC reached
an agreement to commence crude oil sale and supply to Dangote refinery in local
currency.
“The refinery is now poised to supply an initial 25 million litres of PMS into
the domestic market this September. And will subsequently increase this amount
to 30 million litres daily from October 2024,” the NMDPRA stated on its X
page at the time.
But oil
marketers stated on Tuesday that the multi-billion dollar refinery was not
producing up to that volume, as they aligned with the TUC to call on the plant
to ramp up production or this would be sorted through the importation of PMS by
dealers.
Speaking during a press briefing recently in Abuja, the National President,
Trade Union Congress, Festus Osifo, said NNPC should source refined petrol from
other places if the Dangote refinery could not meet the current daily demands
of Nigerians.
“If it (petrol) is not available, it is a problem. If,
for example, the production from Dangote Refinery is less than 15 million
litres per day, it is not sufficient.
“So, while efforts are being made to ramp up production from Dangote refinery,
what we are demanding is that we should look for every other means as we are
ramping up production, we should source for that difference and bring it in for
a while until Dangote can get to that level where the production is sufficient
to get to all nooks and crannies of Nigeria.
“For us, that is
key because it will address the issue of availability,” the TUC boss
stated.
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