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Petrol sells for N120 in Calabar

By on February 25, 2015

Residents of Calabar, the capital of Cross River State, woke up on Sunday and Monday to a new regime of petrol scarcity.

Almost all the filling stations owned by independent marketers in the city remained shut, while a few that opened sold the product for as high as N120 per litre.

Only stations belonging to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation sold the product at the government-approved N87.

An independent marketer, who did not want to be named said, “Sincerely, I cannot explain what is happening. Initially, I thought it was because of politics that the product was not available but I cannot really say.

“Every day, the price at which we buy petrol keeps going up. For two weeks now, I have been trying to load at the depot but cannot and nobody is coming to explain why it is so. As I speak to you, in my two filling stations, we don’t have fuel and it is unfortunate.”

An official of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, who also did not want his name mentioned because he was not authorised to speak on the matter, said the scarcity of petrol was not as a result of the cut in the price of the product without recourse to private tank farm owners.

He said, “The fact is that most of the private tank farm owners do not have the product in stock. The NNPC depot does not have it as well.

“After the sudden slash of the price of the product, most of these private tank farm owners incurred huge losses and they were expected to be paid. Unfortunately, they have not been paid up till this moment.

“Another reason for the scarcity is that when you have small quantity of a product, you are likely to have plenty buyers chasing it and the price will go up. People buy and sell at higher prices in order to make quick returns.”

 

[Punch]