Nigeria’s official petroleum sales regulator, the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) has issued a new template for Premium Motor Spirit (petrol) which puts its open market price down to N131.57 per litre from the previous N134.60/litre.
PPPRA disclosed that the new pricing template released on its website last weekend takes effect from Saturday, August 1, 2015 and was based on Platts Prices for 31 July 2015.
The new price template ensues that federal government would paying N3.03/litre less than it did last month when the open market price was 134.60/litre. This also means subsidy per litre is N44.57 and at an estimated daily consumption of 40million litres, the daily subsidy on petrol is now N1.78billion, down from N1.9 billion last month.
Further breakdown of the new pricing template per litre showed that the off-shore price is now N104.19, with traders margin N1.47, lightering expenses N4.18, NPA 0.77, financing N1.66, jetty depot through put charge N0.80, and storage charge, N3.00. This brings the landing cost to N116.08 per litre.
The distribution margin according to the agency is made up of retailers N4.60, transporters N2.99, dealers N1.75, bridging fund N5.85, Marine Transport Average (MTA) N0.15, and administrative charge N0.15.With this, the distribution margin came to N15.49 and open market price of N134.49 per litre. PPPRA retained the ex-depot price (for collection) at N77.66.
With PMS still selling at official regulated price of N87/litre at most filling stations across the country, the government is expected to save about N121million daily from the new subsidy template.
The reduce subsidy payment came few days after the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) announced that the Port Harcourt and Warri refineries have been successfully re-streamed after a nine-month phased rehabilitation exercise conducted by its in-house engineers and technicians.
The corporation, in a statement by its spokesman, Ohi Alegbe revealed that both plants have commenced preliminary production of petroleum products after successful test-runs. He noted that while PHRC is ramping up its operation to about 60 percent of its 210, 000 barrels per day name plate capacity; WRPC production is projected to hit 80 percent of its installed 125, 000 bpd capacity.
By Olisemeka Obeche (with agency reports)
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