FEC mulls petrol price slash as landing cost drops

The federal executive council is currently deliberating on reducing the pump price of petrol, TheCable can report.

This comes after a presentation by Timipre Sylva, the minister of state for petroleum resources, at the FEC meeting on Wednesday.

According to data made available by the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency, the landing cost of petrol is N64.32 on Monday.

This drop is as a result of the drop in crude oil prices.

Brent crude, the international benchmark of crude oil, traded at $30 on Tuesday and has dropped to $27 on Wednesday.

With this drop, it means that the federal government through the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation has not been paying subsidy on petrol.

Instead, it has been recording a profit of N80 on every litre of petrol consumed.

According to the NNPC, Nigerians consume an estimated 40 million litres of petrol per day.

In a statement released on Tuesday, Atiku Abubakar, former vice president and the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2019 election, had asked the federal government to reduce the pump price of petrol.

He also advised that stamp duty collection be suspended.

This, he said, would protect the economic wellbeing of Nigerians given the economic crisis arising from the coronavirus outbreak across the world.