Private oil marketers have now joined the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) in the importation of petrol.
It was gathered from the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), on Tuesday, in Abuja, that permits to that effect had been given to several marketers to start importing petrol alongside the NNPC.
Before the downstream oil sector was liberalized, in March 2020, the NNPC used to be the sole importer of petrol, a task it handled for more than two years.
Speaking, in Abuja, on Tuesday, the General Manager, Corporate Services of the PPPRA, Kimchi Apollo, said the sole petrol importer status of the NNPC had changed, as his agency recently gave various oil dealers permission to import.
According to Appollo, “Well, as far as I am concerned, many of them (marketers) have gone to import because they took QMs from us to bring in products and I am sure they are doing that already.
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“The QM is just like a pass to go and bring in products. You come to us to say you want to bring in products and then we say go ahead based on the pass that we give.
“So, some marketers came and they got the go-ahead permit to bring in products. So, they will be bringing in products.”
He explained that the market had been liberalised, with both the NNPC and other marketers now shopping for refined petroleum products from international refiners.
He continued, “The market now is such that both the NNPC and other marketers are on the same level of going to buy from the international market to sell to final consumers.”
He said all qualified marketers who approached the agency and had the competence to import petrol were cleared for such operations.
