The President of the Petroleum Products Retail Outlets Owners Association of Nigeria (PETROAN), Billy Gillis-Harry, has said the association cannot explain why it costs more to produce a barrel of crude oil in the country when compared to other nations.
Billy Gillis-Harry said refineries, including Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) and Dangote Refinery, cannot give full details of what it costs them to produce each barrel of crude oil in the country.
In an interview with News Central on Monday, he stated this while answering questions on why its cost reportedly $48 to produce a barrel of crude oil in the country while other oil-producing countries spend only $15 to produce a barrel.
“We can only anticipate a certain price in view in expenses to produce one litre of PMS. But from our experience, those analyses may never be consistent with the realities because there are practical values that you cannot get when you are not the refiner.
“The refiner has their own knowledge of how they want to do things, how they want to work out of how they have produced one litre of PMS. Those are private business facts that it will be a little bit immoral for us to try to pry in there. So we do not know that much, but we have some global standards that we check with,” he said.
When pressed further on the $48 and $15 reported differences, Gillis-Harry stated, “Well, I will not be able to address this subject, but we’ve raised it now, so it might become a subject matter for my technical team to look into. And give the National Executive Council clear technical and financial implications and all of that. Of course, we have to try to look into that in the future.”
He further commended the efforts of Dangote Refinery in ensuring there was no petrol scarcity during the yuletide season.
He added that the reduced price per litre of fuel by Dangote Refinery and NNPCL was a step in the right direction.
“The Dangote is doing the very best they can. They produce 650,000 per day, quite enormous, and it’s been very helpful in making sure that there’s no petroleum for the first time. We are having the product available, and prices are also kind of slightly coming down.
So it’s a good thing, and do we need to say that that would be the pattern consistently? That would be left to be said in the coming weeks, not days. We can see that ₦899 for NNPC and Dangote is something that is worth celebrating,” he added.