Marketers blame drop in diesel price on competition

Marketers have attributed recent drop in pump price of Auto Gas Oil (AGO) otherwise called diesel to deregulation of the product and competition among the players. Th ey claimed that each marketer imports diesel from diff erent sources and competition among the marketers was responsible for the drop in pump price of the product. When asked to react to claims by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) that it was solely responsible for the drop in price of the commodity, one of them said “NNPC is also a marketer and a major player in diesel importation and distribution. Because it pushes huge volume, it surely can infl uence product pricing by selling below cost price. “Th at is why we recommend that the sector should be fully deregulated and allow NNPC and other marketers to operate on level playing fi eld. “Th e operating environment is not level at all. Do you know that at a time when a dollar was selling close to N500/$, the NNPC was subsidising premium motor spirit (PMS) otherwise called petrol. No other marketer can do that.” Recently, the NNPC announced it has crashed the pump price of diesel from as high as N250 per litre to between N155-N160 per liter at NNPC Retail stations across the country. Th is led other marketers to drop the pump price of diesel to as low as between N160- N170 per litre as at Sunday. Investigation revealed that major oil marketers including Oando, Forte, MRS, NIPCO and others sell between N160-N170 per liter in Lagos and its environs. Meanwhile, a national survey by Oil and Gas Forum, NNPC’s weekly TV programme, indicated that in the last few weeks, the price of diesel has fallen steadily from between N175 and N200 per litre as at June 18, 2017, to as low as between N155 and N160 per litre in some stations across the country as at last week