Nigeria’s Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Oil), Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, has expressed his displeasure at the inability of domestic petroleum product prices to reflect the sharp drop in the global crude oil price index.
The Minister, in his industry address at the NMDPRA Stakeholders’ Engagement on addressing issues affecting the downstream sector of our Petroleum Industry, stated that the global crude oil price index should be a metric that determines the change in prices of petroleum products, and he hereby directed marketers and regulators to lower pump prices accordingly.
He noted that, with the easing of the geopolitical factors that had driven petroleum product prices upward globally in recent months, referencing the US–Israel war in Iran, which has witnessed a fragile peace deal, there is a compelling need for prices across various petroleum products to reflect current market realities.
“My opinion is that the current (crude oil) pricing is not cost-reflective of the cost of crude oil, but they (marketers) are saying that crude oil prices are still high at about $90 per barrel, we are saying that when it was $118 per barrel, the price was rapidly going up, now the price is drastically going down why it’s not coming down in the same way,” Minister lamented.
“We are continuously engaging ourselves as these are issues that concern the government, and they (marketers) should also go back and think about what we should put together to address high cost of PMS that is not reflecting of crude pricing in the market as at today,” He added
Citing the provisions of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), the minister stated that the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) is authorized to checkmate activities within the downstream sector to prevent excessive profiteering and ensure that market operations remain fair, transparent, and in the national interest.
