The amount was disbursed to cover for price equalization of over 11.6 billion litres of Premium Motor Spirit, PMS popularly called petrol used within the period of review.
According to the petroleum ministry's scorecard for 2022 presented by the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, the volume of PMS equalized stood at 11,622,926,494 litres. The amount paid as equalization was N173,200,284,779.
The number of vehicles tracked was put at 1,277 while 25,525,688,042 litres of total PMS was discharged. The data also showed that during the three-year period, 66.7 million litres of PMS was the average daily sufficiency with the total truck-out volume being 24,346,614,589 litres.
The FG through the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority, NMDPRA works to ensure price uniformity and also confirms PMS price equalization via the reimbursement of marketers for trucking products to filling stations anywhere in Nigeria.
This, however, has failed to regulate the price of the product across the country as different states and regions have different petrol pump prices when compared to other states and regions.
The different pump price of PMS has been observed across the states for years, as it is almost impossible to get a uniform price for the commodity in all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory.
This price disparity has been noticed as residents of Lagos, Abuja and some other states have been reported to purchase petrol at as high as N250 per litre from independent marketers while the mega stations owned by major marketers have been reported to sell at the pump price of N170-N190.