By Citizenship Daily
The Dangote Petroleum Industry has drawn attention to plots, allegedly by energy players, to import substandard petrol, PMS, and dump it on Nigerians.
This, the refinery giant said, will ultimately compromise the health of Nigerians and damage the integrity of their vehicles.
A statement by the Chief Branding and Communications Officer of Dangote Group, Anthony Chiejina on Sunday said “if anyone claims they can land PMS at a price cheaper than what we are selling, then they are importing substandard products and conniving with international traders to dump low quality products into the country without concern for the health of Nigerians or the longevity of their vehicles.”
The refinery said it was constrained to respond to the recent misinformation being circulated by IPMAN, PETROAN and other associations.
“Both organisations claim they can import PMS at lower than what is being sold by the Dangote Refinery. We benchmark our prices against international prices and we believe our prices are competitive relative to the price of imports.”
According to Dangote, “post deregulation, NNPC set the pace by selling to domestic marketers at N971 per litre for sale into ships, and at N990 for sale into trucks. This set the benchmark for our pricing and we have even gone lower to sell at N960 per litre for sale into ships while maintaining N990 per litre for sale into trucks.
“In good faith, and in the interest of the country, we commenced sales at these prices without clarity on the exchange rate that we will use to pay for the crude purchased.
“At the same time, an international trading company has recently hired a depot facility next to the Dangote Refinery, with the objective of using it to blend substandard products that will be dumped into the market to compete with Dangote Refinery’s higher quality products.
“This is detrimental to domestic refining in Nigeria. We should point out that it is not unusual for countries to protect their domestic industries in order to provide jobs and grow the economy”.
Dangote called on the public to “disregard the deliberate disinformation being circulated by agents of people who prefer for us to continue to export jobs and import poverty.”
