Petrol: Major Oil Marketers Lose N10bn To Price Reduction — MOMAN

Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria (MOMAN), yesterday, said that marketers lost over N10 billion to the recent reduction of the pump price of Premium Motoring Spirit (PMS) also called petrol, to N121 from N145 per litre by the Federal Government.

Meanwhile, the association has called for the full deregulation of the petroleum downstream sector, stressing that the federal government only removed subsidy on petrol, and has not deregulated the sector.

The association disclosed this during a webinar on “Downstream Petroleum Market Deregulation: Prospective Impact on Nigerian Economy Post COVID-19.” The webinar was organised by Financial Energy Review in collaboration with Leadgrid Series.

Speaking on the state of the sector, Chairman of MOMAN, Mr Adetunji Oyebanji, stated that the petroleum downstream sector was hard hit by the twin challenges of COVID-19 and crash in global crude oil prices.

He said the sector thrived on movement of persons and goods which were severely curtailed due to the lockdown measures put in place by the federal and state governments to contain the spread of coronavirus.

“Why we talk about complete deregulation being a better option is because we need investments in our pipelines distribution network which are very old.

“We need our refineries to be put in place and Dangote Refinery is coming up but we need more refineries so that we can reduce the pressure on our foreign exchange reserve.”

“Players in the market need to know when to stock and when not to stock products because we may have lost up to N10 billion when those prices were reduced recently. That doesn’t encourage investors,” he said.