Nigeria’s Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Oil), Mr. Heineken Lokpobiri, has said that the price of crude oil in the international market remains a major force in driving the fluctuations in the pump price of petrol in the country.
Speaking at the inaugural meeting of the Petroleum Industry Stakeholders Forum, in Abuja, the minister reiterated that the international oil market was a major factor behind the varying costs of petrol across the country.
According to him, the downstream sector is now fully deregulated with the government no longer involved in setting the prices of petroleum products prices.
Reacting to concerns over potential increases in pump price after the cost of Brent, the global benchmark for crude, crossed $80 per barrel, Lokpobiri pointed out that deregulation ended all malfeasance associated with the petrol subsidy policy.
He explained that the government is now more interested in quality control as petrol prices are not controlled or predicted by an individual but by market forces and the whole essence of deregulation is for price to find its level.
As oil price goes up, petrol price will go up, and as oil price comes down, the price will come up. During the Christmas season, I was in Bayelsa, and I tried to go around different filling stations. Some filling stations were selling N1,020, others were selling N999, while others were selling N1,015.
“What we are concerned about, and I’ve always had that discussion with you, with the Authority Chief Executive of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority, is that the government is more interested in quality control. The government is more interested in availability, and what the government is particularly interested in is the dispensation of the right quantity.
“If you are buying 10 litres of PMS, let it be that you are not short-changed by the retail filling station. That is where we have issues. And once there is competition, people have a choice, and that’s why you don’t see any queues,” he said.
GIK/APA