Crude oil prices dropped to $71.21 on Wednesday even as the Nigerian
National Petroleum Company Limited and other fuel marketers retained petrol
prices above N1,000 per litre.
According to Oilprice.com, Brent crude fell further to $71.21 on Wednesday,
while the United States benchmark, West Texas Intermediate, dropped to
$68.16, its lowest level since the US-Iran war started on February 28.
Despite the sharp decline in crude prices from a high of $120 to about $71,
petrol prices in Nigeria have recorded only marginal reductions, with some
filling stations still selling the product above N1,200 per litre. During the
conflict, petrol sold for about N1,300 per litre.
Amid complaints from Nigerians, the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources
(Oil), Heineken Lokpobiri, warned on Monday that the government would not
tolerate profiteering and other practices that exploit fuel consumers. Lokpobiri
said that although the era of government-fixed petrol prices was over,
deregulation did not mean regulators should abdicate their responsibility to
protect consumers.
Speaking in Abuja at the opening ceremony of the 2026 General Counsel and
Legal Advisers Forum organised by the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream
Petroleum Regulatory Authority, the minister acknowledged public concerns
over the failure of refiners and importers to lower the gantry prices of petroleum
products even as crude prices fell from a high of $120 during the US-Iran war to
about $71 per barrel.
On Sunday, the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission
expressed concern over what it described as possible consumer exploitation in
the downstream petroleum sector following the failure of fuel prices to decline
significantly despite the sharp drop in global crude oil prices.
Reacting, fuel marketers declared that their filling stations would stop selling
petrol if the Federal Government attempted to enforce price controls.
The National Publicity Secretary of the Independent Petroleum Marketers
Association of Nigeria, Chinedu Ukadike, denied allegations of profiteering,
saying many marketers were already running at a loss following the series of
price reductions by the Dangote Petroleum Refinery.
He warned, “Marketers will shut down if they try somehow to enforce price
control. We are going to shut down our stations nationwide. You can’t be
regulating a deregulated market. You can’t tell me how much to sell my product
without trying to know how much I bought it.”