Petrol price may drop this month, say marketers

The pump price of petrol may reduce marginally this month, going by the fall in global crude oil prices, oil marketers said on Sunday. Ac...

The pump price of petrol may reduce marginally this month, going by the fall in global crude oil prices, oil marketers said on Sunday.

According to them, since the cost of petrol has been largely determined by the price of crude oil, the recent marginal plunge in crude oil cost could lead to a drop in petrol price in Nigeria.

Findings by our correspondent on Sunday showed that Brent, the global benchmark against which Nigeria’s crude is priced, dropped in price by $1.66 or 4.06 per cent as at 13.20pm Central Standard Time.

The commodity (Brent) traded at $39.27 per barrel at the same time, while the cost of crude in the OPEC Basket was put at $39.94 per barrel.

Crude oil in OPEC basket dipped by $1.77 when compared with what it traded on the preceding day.

Speaking to our correspondent in Abuja on Sunday night, the National President, Petroleum Products Retail Outlets Owners Association of Nigeria, Billy Gillis-Harry, said the prediction of marketers was that petrol price could dip in October.

He, however, said that oil marketers, particularly members of PETROAN, would continue to call for an enlarged stakeholders meeting in determining the price of petrol across the country.

Gillis-Harry said, “We will continue to insist that the arm-chair pattern of fixing prices is not correct. You saw the confusion it caused the last time. We are going to have a meeting with them (government) that will involve all the stakeholders.

 “So, hopefully by then we should be able to have proper information to give to you on the latest in price.

“However, based on the slide in crude oil prices, there is the suspicion that petrol price may come down.”

The Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency commenced the deregulation of the downstream oil sector in March.

Although it provided petrol price bands in some months after March 2020, the PPPRA eventually stopped issuing price bands, as it explained that the downstream sector had been fully deregulated.

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