President of Dangote Refinery, Aliko Dangote, has stated that the petrol it sold to the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited is cheaper than what it would have cost if the company were to import the commodity.
He stated this in an interview with Bloomberg TV in New York, USA.
Dangote said that during the time NNPC bought from them, the national oil company also imported about 800,000 metric tonnes of petrol into the country at a more costly rate.
“What’s going on is not really a disagreement per se. NNPC bought from us this particular one on the 15 of September at the international price. They also bought over 800,000 metric tonnes of gasoline imported.
“The one they bought from us was actually cheaper than the one they imported. So, when they announced our price, it wasn’t really the real price. What they announced was likely what it cost them including profits, and other things. Meanwhile, they’ve never added profit to their cost before.
“And then, the other one is what they imported but the people don’t know how much they spend for importing. But their own importation was about fifteen to 20 per cent more expensive than ours. What they first do is to sell at a basket price. If they want to remove subsidy, they can announce that they’ve removed subsidy. Everybody will adjust,” he said.
The NNPC recently announced that Dangote Refinery sold petrol to them at N898 per litre after the first batch of offtake from the facility but the Dangote Group refuted NNPC’s claim, explaining that the quoted N890 per litre does not represent the actual national price.
Dangote Refinery had insisted that they sold the petrol to NNPC at a considerably subsidised rate, given the circumstances surrounding their crude oil acquisition.
