“Dangote refinery sold petrol at N898 per litre” – NNPC

The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited has confirmed that it purchased petrol from Dangote Petroleum Refinery at N898 per litre. This announcement was made by Olufemi Soneye, the Chief Corporate Communications Officer of NNPC, during an interview on Sunday.

This revelation follows earlier reports that suggested the NNPC had acquired petrol from Dangote at a lower price of N766 per litre. However, Soneye clarified, “For this initial loading, it was N898 per litre so far.”

The current purchase price is notably higher than the N855 per litre pump price that NNPC set at its retail stations on September 3. The state oil company had previously raised the cost of petrol from around N600 per litre.

When asked when the petrol purchased from Dangote would be available in the market, Soneye could not provide a definite timeline, saying, “Our own is to get the load to the control distribution.”

Earlier, the federal government announced that the distribution of Dangote-produced petrol would commence on Sunday. Supporting this, Dangote Refinery confirmed that it had started loading NNPC trucks with petrol earlier in the day. NNPC had deployed over 100 trucks to the refinery’s petrol-loading gantry on Saturday.

The deployment follows the government’s decision to make NNPC the exclusive distributor of petrol produced by Dangote Refinery in Nigeria, ruling out direct sales to other oil marketers. However, the refinery is permitted to sell diesel to any off-taker.

Dangote Refinery, which began petrol production on September 3, is expected to supply 25 million litres of petrol daily in September, with plans to increase output to 30 million litres per day by October, according to the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA).