Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals is considering restricting sales of Premium Motor Spirit to major marketers that continue importing petrol into Nigeria, according to people familiar with the matter, a move that would mark one of the sharpest interventions yet in the country’s shifting fuel supply chain.
The measure, which could take effect as early as this week, remains subject to further consultations and could still be revised, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing internal deliberations.
The refinery’s concerns centre on market transparency and the integrity of products carrying its brand, rather than on import activity itself.
Read also: Dangote Refinery threatens petrol exports as imports hit 43%
At issue, the people said, is a practice in which some marketers blend substandard imported petrol with fuel purchased from Dangote before distributing the mixture to retail stations.
That leaves the refinery unable to guarantee the quality of fuel that consumers associate with its name, even when it never touched the blended batch.
“It is difficult to understand why we would invest heavily in producing high-quality petroleum products for Nigerians, only for those products to be mixed with imported products of uncertain quality and the resulting product to be associated with the refinery,” one person familiar with the refinery’s position said.
The refinery has also flagged what it considers a gap in Nigeria’s regulatory infrastructure: the absence of a standard laboratory operated by the industry regulator capable of independently verifying and certifying the specifications of imported fuel before it reaches the market.
The dispute…
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Read Full Article by Dipo Oladehinde at businessday.ng
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