'Marketers sell kerosene expensive'

Major and independent marketers of petroleum products at the weekend experienced acute scarcity of Dual Purpose Kerosene (DPK), thereby encouraging high level of profiteering among the marketers in the process, ThisDay reports.

The few depot owners with stock of the product were selling not only above the government’s official price but also above the expected open market price quoted by the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA). The PPPRA at the weekend quoted the landing cost and the Expected Open Market Price (EOMP) of imported kerosene at N91.26 and N106.75 per litre, respectively.

However, the only four marketers that had stock in Lagos at the weekend were selling at ex-depot price of between N132 and N137 per litre. The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), the sole importer of kerosene is expected to sell to the marketers for N40.90, and it was not clear why the marketers hiked the ex-depot price to over N130 per litre.

With the price of kerosene going for over N130 at the depots, the few filling stations with the product were selling at N150 and above at the weekend, even though the deregulated market price quoted by the PPPRA was N106.75. The government’s approved ex-depot price of kerosene is N40.90K, while the official pump price is N50 per litre.

Energy Mix Report