As fuel scarcity rages on in the country the ex-depot price of petrol soared to N128 on Tuesday, March 29, from the official N76 per litre, as marketers made desperate moves to source the product to service their clients.
It was gathered that the hike in ex-depot price followed pressures from independent marketers to get allocations to sell to consumers who are willing to pay any price for fuel.
According to the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency,PPPRA, pricing template, ex-depot price as at yesterday remained N76.00.
However, a source who craved anonymity while speaking to Daily Sun that there was no way depots would sell petrol at the official ex-depot price of N76.00 because it was impossible to do so.
The Source said: ‘‘For today, we only managed to give out 20 dockets considering the huge number of trucks waiting to load. But we can only give dockets based on the quantity of products at our disposal. This is simply a case of demand and supply and marketers are ready to buy at whatever cost because they know there is demand waiting for them on the streets.”
‘‘The desperation of government to ensure that fuel is available to members of the public may have forced them to seek alternative means to end this scarcity and because the request is coming to the refiners as an emergency, they have to hike prices.
“The products that are being expected are cargoes that were going to other countries but had to be diverted to Nigeria to address the lingering fuel crisis,’’ the source said.
