More Nigerians have continued to react to a recent comment by the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Mr. Timipre Sylva, who earlier in the week, told Nigerians to get their prepared the minds of Nigerians for a higher regime of the pump price of petrol, given the new fortune of crude oil in the international market. With the price of Brent crude oil still hovering around $60 per barrel yesterday, Sylva said a high cost of petrol will be inevitable and urged Nigerians to be ready to bear the pains of the impending new price regime.
Continuing, he advised Nigerians to prepare for more pains.
Besides, the federal government yesterday ramped up its plan to achieve the $10 per barrel crude oil production target with the official inauguration of the Nigerian Upstream Cost Optimisation Programme (NUCOP). Sylva, at the NUCOP inauguration in Abuja, said the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) cannot continue to bear the cost of under-recovery or subsidy, adding that while government revenue has improved following the rise in crude oil price, the gains cannot be frittered on subsidy payment. According to the pricing template of the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), the landing cost of petrol is over N179 per litre, while the expected Open Market Price (OMP) is about N202 per litre.
