The Dangote Refinery located in Lagos has denied selling petrol to the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) at N898 per litre.
A spokesman for the refinery, Anthony Chiejina, in a statement late Sunday, described the claim by the NNPCL as “misleading and mischievous”.
He said, “Our attention has been drawn to a statement attributed to NNPCL spokesperson, Mr. Olufemi Soneye, that we sell our PMS at N898 per litre to the NNPCL.
“This statement is both misleading and mischievous, deliberately aimed at undermining the milestone achievement recorded today, September 15, 2024, towards addressing energy insufficiency and insecurity, which has bedeviled the economy in the past 50 years.
“We urge Nigerians to disregard this malicious statement and await a formal announcement on the pricing, by the Technical Sub-Committee on Naira-based crude sales to local refineries, appointed by His Excellency, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu GCFR, which will commence on October 1, 2024, bearing in mind that our current stock of crude was procured in dollars.
“It should also be noted that we sold the products to NNPCL in dollars with a lot of savings against what they are currently importing. With this action, there will be petrol in every local government area of the country regardless of their remote nature.”
The NNPCL began loading the first batch of petrol from the Dangote Refinery on Sunday.
Last December, Dangote, Africa’s leading industrialist, commenced operations at his $20bn facility sited in Lagos with 350,000 barrels a day.
The refinery, which was initially bogged by regulatory battles, hopes to achieve its full capacity of 650,000 barrels per day by the end of the year.
The refinery has begun the supply of diesel and aviation fuel to marketers in the country and now petrol.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, faces energy challenges, with all its state-owned refineries non-operational. The country is heavily reliant on imported refined petroleum products, with the state-run NNPC being the major importer of the essential commodities.
Fuel queues are commonplace in the country. Prices of petrol tripled since the removal of subsidy in May 2023, from around ₦200/litre to about ₦1000/litre, compounding the woes of the citizens who power their vehicles, and generate sets with petrol, no thanks to decades-long epileptic electricity supply.
