The Dangote Refinery has disclosed that it sold Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) to the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) in dollars.
Anthony Chiejina, Group Chief Branding and Communications Office of Dangote, disclosed this in a statement on Sunday.
Chiejina was responding to the claim that NNPCL procured PMS from Dangote Refinery at N898 per litre.
According to the Chief Spokesperson of the NNPCL, Olufemi Soneye: “We successfully loaded PMS at the Dangote Refinery today. The claim that we purchased it at N760 per liter is incorrect. For this initial loading, the price from the refinery was N898 per liter.”
Newscentral reported how the oil firm had moved about 300 trucks to the 650,000 capacity refinery in Lagos, on Saturday, and loading commenced on Sunday.
But in its statement, Dangote Refinery said, “Our attention has been drawn to a statement attributed to NNPCL spokesperson, Mr. Olufemi Soneye, that we sell our PMS at N898 per litre to the NNPCL.
“This statement is both misleading and mischievous, deliberately aimed at undermining the milestone achievement recorded today, September 15, 2024, towards addressing energy insufficiency and insecurity, which has bedeviled the economy in the past 50 years.
“We urge Nigerians to disregard this malicious statement and await a formal announcement on the pricing, by the Technical Sub-Committee on Naira-based crude sales to local refineries, appointed by His Excellency, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu GCFR, which will commence on October 1, 2024, bearing in mind that our current stock of crude was procured in dollars.
“It should also be noted that we sold the products to NNPCL in dollars with a lot of savings against what they are currently importing. With this action, there will be petrol in every local government area of the country regardless of their remote nature.
“We assure Nigerians of availability of quality petroleum product and putting an end to the endemic fuel scarcity in the country.”