International firm hires depot to blend substandard petrol in Nigeria — Dangote

Dangote Petroleum Refinery, yesterday, alleged that an international trading company has hired a depot to blend substandard petroleum products in Nigeria.

The company also said its petrol is cheaper than the one imported into the country by NNPCL.

It said the international trading company plans to mislead unsuspecting local buyers in efforts to compete with its product in the domestic market.

The refinery also called on the government to protect domestic industries to provide jobs and grow the economy.

Group Chief Branding and Communications of Dangote Group, Anthony Chiejina, who raised the alarm in a statement on Sunday, said: “An international trading company has recently hired a depot facility next to the Dangote Refinery, to use it to blend sub-standard products that will be dumped into the market to compete with Dangote Refinery’s higher quality production.

“This is detrimental to the growth of domestic refining in Nigeria. We should point out that it is not unusual for countries to protect their domestic industries to provide jobs and grow the economy. For example, the US and Europe have had to impose high tariffs on EVs and microchips to protect their domestic industries.

‘Disregard deliberate disinformation’
“While we continue with our determination to provide affordable, good quality, domestically-refined petroleum products in Nigeria, we call 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.

“We had lately refrained from engaging in media fights but we are constrained to respond to the recent misinformation being circulated by IPMAN, PETROAN, and other associations.

“Both organisations claim that they can import PMS at lower prices 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.

“If anyone claims they can land PMS at a price cheaper than what we are selling, then they are importing sub-standard 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.

“Unfortunately, the regulator, NMDPRA, does not even have laboratory facilities which can be used to detect sub-standard products when imported into the country.

“Post deregulation, NNPC set the pace by selling PMS 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.”

While also explaining its petrol is cheaper than the one imported into the country, Chiejina said: ‘’We had lately refrained from engaging in media fights but we are constrained to respond to the recent misinformation being circulated by IPMAN, PETROAN and other associations.

“Both organisations claim they can import PMS at lower prices than what is being sold by Dangote Refinery. We benchmark our prices against international prices and we believe our prices are competitive relative to the price of imports.

“If anyone claims they can land PMS at a price cheaper than what we are selling, then they are importing sub-standard 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.

“Unfortunately, the regulator (NMDPRA) does not even have laboratory facilities which can be used to detect sub-standard products when imported into the country.

‘’Post-deregulation, the NNPC set the pace by selling PMS 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 the sale into ships while maintaining N990 per litre for sale into trucks.

‘’In good faith, and the interest of the country, we commenced sales at these prices without clarity on the exchange rate that we use to pay for the crude.’’