By Charles Pemu 
The price of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), commonly known as petrol, rose sharply yesterday, increasing by 6.8 per cent to a high of N955 per litre, up from the N890 per litre recorded last week.
Reports from both stations of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) and those operated by Independent Marketers across Lagos and Abuja confirmed that the fuel was being dispensed at prices ranging from N900 to N955 per litre.
The price hike has been directly attributed to persistent supply and logistics hurdles affecting the industry’s key players, including NNPCL and the Dangote Refinery.
In a telephone interview, Mr. Chinedu Ukadike, the Public Relations Officer of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN), explained the cause of the increase:
“Dangote increased their loading price to N845 per litre, as against N825 earlier sold, thereby resulting in a selling price of between N900 and N955, depending on the location,” Ukadike stated.
He further pointed out that supply bottlenecks are intensifying the crisis. While NNPCL is reportedly limiting supply to its own retail outlets, the product volume from the Dangote Refinery is proving insufficient for the wider market.
“Most of our members, who paid for products to Dangote, are yet to load for two weeks now,” Ukadike revealed. He added that the shortage has led to market scrambling, which invariably drives up prices.
“I will say that when people are scrambling for products, it results to hike in price. Some marketers, who paid to buy about three million litres from Dangote, were only given one million litres, as they complained of products being rationed, amongst marketers,” he concluded, highlighting the market imbalance caused by restricted supply.