*Import gulps extra
N2.4bn daily
*Oil price hits
$58.37, 18-month high
The importation of
Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) into Nigeria is to gulp extra cost of
over N2.369
billion per day from Federal Government and marketers as the landing cost for
fuel has soared to N212.7 per litre.
This came as oil
prices hit their highest levels since July 2015 with Brent reaching $58.37 and
$55.24, before paring gains on the strong dollar.
Buoyed by this, the
Federal Government, checks by New Telegraph showed yesterday, is already
mulling total deregulation of the downstream sector.
While the modulated
bracket of N135-N145 is given as official price for fuel, checks showed that
extra N67.7 is incurred on over 35 million litres daily imports as the landing
cost soared to N212.7 per litre.
Head of Energy
Research at Ecobank, Dolapo Oni, stated that the landing cost for PMS was N165
per litre for a $52 per barrel price.
“When oil price was
at $52 dollars per barrel, the landing cost was N165 per barrel, later when it
was $55, the price soared to N210 per litre,” the financial analyst said.
Now that it is $58
per barrel, the landing cost hovers around N213 per litre, checks by New
Telegraph showed.
The Central Bank of
Nigeria (CBN) had earlier asked banks to submit bids for a “special currency
auction” to clear the backlog of matured outstanding dollar obligations for
petrol importers and selected sectors of the economy.
The Petroleum
Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), an agency saddled with pricing
regulation, has taken down its website, keeping the public in the dark on
change in pricing template for petroleum product.
Spokesperson for the
agency, Lanre Oladele, could not be reached for comments. His mobile phone was
not available while SMS sent was not replied.
The PPPRA website,
however, showed default webpage, which read: “SORRY!
If you are the owner
of this website, please contact your hosting provider: webmaster@ pppra.gov.ng.
“It is possible you have reached this page because: The IP address has changed.
There has been a server misconfiguration.
The site may have
moved to a different server.” Earlier estimates from the PPPRA showed that the
country needs an average of $500 million every month to import refined
petroleum products, since all of its three refineries are currently producing
at less than 25 per cent of their installed capacity.
The price of PMS
could surge to over N220 per litre if the new realities of the oil market are
taken into consideration.
The oil prices
turned negative after earlier hitting 18-month highs yesterday, the first
trading day of 2017, as the dollar rallied to its highest since 2002.
Traders said crude
prices were buoyed earlier in the day by hopes that a deal between OPEC and
other big oil exporters to cut production, which started on Sunday, would drain
a global supply glut.
Brent futures were
down 95 cents or 1.7 per cent at $55.87 a barrel by 12:05 p.m. EST. U.S. West
Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude fell 95 cents or 1.8 per cent to $52.77 per
barrel. Earlier in the session, both oil contracts hit their highest levels
since July 2015 with Brent reaching $58.37 and $55.24, before paring gains on
strong dollar.
“The dollar strength
is certainly weighing on oil prices,” said Andrew Lipow, President of energy
consulting firm, Lipow Oil Associates in Houston, noting U.S. stock markets
also pared their gains from earlier in the day with the dollar rally.
Meanwhile, Minister
of State for Petroleum Resources, Ibe Kachikwu, confirmed in a paper presented
at a forum in Lagos penultimate week that the Federal Government had a goal to
deregulate the downstream sector of the petroleum industry.
Though the
government, Kachikwu said, was not there yet, he added that it would continue
to fine tune the process until the goal is achieved.
“At every given time
in the history of every country, you will always have partial deregulation. The
reason being that you have to catch up each time and make an amendment, and
even if it is just one day, you might have some level of subsidy for that one
or two days before it is removed.
“What is important
is the goalpost; where are we headed? Where we are headed is to try and free
the industry, so that it makes do with its own rules, set its own prices
itself. There are few mechanics that we still need to get in place properly.
We can’t forget the
fact that we still have foreign exchange challenges and that income to
government is still very tight.
“You still have to
find a way to balance that. But what is important is what the objective is.
The objective is
still to fully deregulate to find private capital to get them to where they
should be,” the minister said.
Corroborating
Kachikwu’s view, a former Executive Secretary of the PPPRA, Reginald Stanley,
emphasised the need for quick deregulation of the sub-sector.
It is imperative, he
said, to establish and empower a strong independent regulator to oversee
activities in the sub-sector and ensure the implementation of open and
transparent rules for the downstream value chain.
Newtelegraphonline
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