- They made the call under the aegis of the Crude Oil Refinery-Owners Association of Nigeria, during a courtesy call on the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Oil), Heineken Lokpobiri, at his office in Abuja
On Wednesday, operators of modular refineries in Nigeria urged the Federal Government to eliminate numerous fees imposed on locally refined Automotive Gas Oil, commonly known as diesel, with the aim of alleviating the soaring cost of the product.
In recent months, diesel prices have surged, causing detrimental effects on various sectors, notably the downstream oil industry where the operation of many filling stations has been hindered.
The escalating cost of diesel has been a recurring challenge for oil marketers, making it challenging to transport products from South-based tank farms to Northern filling stations without raising the product’s price.
In an effort to mitigate the cost of diesel, particularly the domestically produced diesel by modular refineries, operators of these facilities emphasized on Wednesday that the Federal Government should eliminate the numerous fees associated with the commodity.
They made the call under the aegis of the Crude Oil Refinery-Owners Association of Nigeria, during a courtesy call on the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Oil), Heineken Lokpobiri, at his office in Abuja.
This came as queues for Premium Motor Spirit, popularly called petrol, grew worse in the Federal Capital Territory and neighbouring Nasarawa and Niger states, as many independent retail stations were shut down due to lack of products to dispense.
Speaking at the meeting with the petroleum minister, the President, CORAN, Momoh Oyarekhua, said, “As at today, for every litre of AGO (diesel) or DPK (kerosene) you sell into the market, those fees cumulate into about N9.80, which invariably increases the price of that product into the market.”