September 25, (THEWILL) – The Federal Government, on Wednesday, said Dangote Refinery and the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited are operating under a deregulated market and at liberty to determine the market price of petrol.
Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, who expressed this position, emphasised that the Federal Government will not intervene in the ongoing petrol price controversy between the two companies.
Speaking to State House Correspondents in Abuja, Onanuga said the Tinubu administration focused on promoting alternative energy solutions through the use of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) as a cheaper alternative to petrol. He noted that the price difference was significant, with CNG costing about N230 per litre equivalent compared to PMS at around N850 per litre.
According to him, the government aims to have about a million vehicles running on CNG and plans to subsidise the conversion costs for private vehicle owners.
He said, “The PMS field, the PMS regime has been deregulated. Dangote is a private company. NNPC should not forget it’s a limited liability company. Whatever controversy both of them are having is their own problem. They are operating, even if you go by the terms of the Petroleum Industry Act, NNPC is on its own. Even though it’s owned by the Federal Government, the state governments and local councils and everything, it’s operating as a limited liability company.
“You can see what the private market has said, that I think they find the NNPC or Dangote price too much for them. They will resolve to import fuel because they clear the market at the end of the day.
“It’s the consumer who benefits if a price war starts. If NNPC fuel is too much, the public market can go to the market and bring in their own fuel and sell at the price that they think is very reasonable and profitable for them. So my answer is that, as far as this is concerned, the government is not dabbling into this controversy.
“The government has a programme which somebody mentioned earlier about CNG. The government wants to make sure that Nigerians have a choice. If you don’t want to use PMS, you can use CNG, and you can see what’s going on in many of our cities, Lagos, Ibadan, Benin and some other places where transporters are already embracing CNG.
“And the whole idea that CNG, the equivalent of gas to PMS, the gap is very very wide. If you want to buy a litre of petrol, if they sell it, let’s say N850, what they’re going to get by the equivalent of CNG is about N230, and you can see the gap.
“Some of the transporters are already converting their vehicles to CNG, and the government has a plan to make sure that about a million of those vehicles run on CNG. The whole idea is that if they run on CNG, the cost of transportation will go down.”
