Fresh pressure is building on Nigeria’s downstream petroleum market as Dangote Petroleum Refinery on Wednesday resumed gantry loading of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) in naira after a week-long suspension.
The company however raised its ex-depot price by N140 to N1,215 per litre, a move expected to trigger another round of pump price adjustments across the country.
The increase which is a 13.02% jump from the previous N1,075 per litre, comes barely one week after the refinery suspended truck loading and temporarily switched to dollar-denominated sales, a decision that disrupted supply, pushed marketers to private depots and drove ex-depot prices above N1,300 per litre.
Dangote Refinery in a notice to its customers announced that gantry loading had resumed under a revised naira pricing template, with all outstanding truck-loading volumes repriced at N1,215 per litre with immediate effect.
The refinery increased gantry price from N1,075 per litre to N1,215 per litre, representing an increase of N140 per litre.
The notice informed customers that the revised gantry and coastal prices took immediate effect, adding that all unloaded gantry volumes would be repriced at the new rate.
Although the return to naira transactions is expected to ease supply bottlenecks, the new ex-depot price is expected to cascade through distribution chain, with marketers likely to pass extra cost to consumers through retail prices.
The refinery had resumed coastal loading a day earlier, increasing its coastal PMS price to $1,161.23 per metric tonne from $1,044.62/MT, an increase of 11.2 per cent.
The latest development effectively ends the uncertainty created by the refinery’s brief dollar pricing regime. However, it also signals that motorists may not be spared another increase at filling stations as marketers begin to factor the new loading cost, transportation expenses and operating margins into retail prices.
The refinery had last week suspended both coastal and gantry loading after introducing a dollar-denominated pricing template, citing difficulties in sourcing sufficient crude oil under the Federal Government’s naira-for-crude arrangement.
The suspension tightened product availability across the downstream sector and forced marketers to source supplies from private depots, where ex-depot prices rose by about N200 per litre to roughly N1,275, reflecting increased replacement costs.
(Ripples)
