Petroleum marketers attribute the continued rise in gasoline prices to the federal government’s inability to produce enough petroleum products for domestic distributors.
Ejike Jonathan, Secretary of State for the Nigerian Petroleum Products Retail Store Owners’ Association, said the dysfunctional state of refineries. He claimed that this has left private depot owners as the only suppliers of petroleum products in the country.
Jonathan noted in an interview that only two depots are supplying products to marketers. These two depots are the only suppliers out of the nineteen depots in Rivers state. He added that the shortage of supply is caused by FG’s inability to close the demand-supply gap.
Jonathan said;
“Refineries ought to function optimally so that they can sell to retailers; private depot operators will now cushion the effect so that there will be equilibrium in the market. But rather than do that, the refineries are moribund.
“We now have an epileptic situation whereby the PDOs are supplying to the marmot crowd. Now as I speak with you, we have only two PDOs that have petroleum products. The transportation alone is almost N400,000.
“Some months ago, tanker drivers were charging within the range of 1,000,000 to 1,500,000 which is a multiplier effect and will affect demand and supply.”
Clarifying the reason for the difference in the price of petrol in various filling stations, Jonathan explained that petroleum marketers scout for products, including those outside the state, and sell according to what they buy from private depots.
“People sell as they buy”, he said.
cc: Daily Post Ng
