BNW

B N W: Biafra Nigeria World News

...For a better society... Thursday, August 19 2004 Vol 17 No.30 News Editorial Opinion Politics Sports Features Health Woman Foreign News Columnists Business Money/Market InfoTel Brands/Promotions Trade/Commerce View from America Fresh fuel price hike looms SOPURUCHI ONWUKA INDICATIONS are growing that fuel prices will soon be increased following trends in the export market prices of crude oil. Daily Champion checks yesterday showed that the committee of major petroleum marketers has started computing fresh cost components that will build the new pump prices. Members of the committee have been meeting since Monday when crude prices in the export market peaked at an all-time high of $46.91 for the United States Light Sweet crude. The basket of seven crude types produced by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) also set an all-time price record, Monday, at $41.70, discarding last Friday�s record of $41.33. The new prices, which have started cascading, mainly affected contracts for September delivery, but market analysts said that refiners have become jittery with the resilience of the crude prices against mitigation efforts by OPEC. Following calls by the world�s industrialised economies that consume the bulk of world�s oil output, OPEC last month produced at 29.67 million barrels of oil per day, two million barrels above its July ceiling of 25.5 mb/d. Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) also procures crude oil at export price parity even as its limited refining capacity has made high cost importation of the products inevitable as marketers battle rising domestic demand. Sources close to the committee of major marketers told Daily Champion yesterday that the committee had been monitoring international prices with keen interest and may soon respond to higher crude prices. The committee which controls over 73 per cent of the domestic fuel market, augments inadequate supplies from the NNPC with products imported from offshore refineries at high cost. Fuel prices for the blended products are determined after filtering in varying cost components associated with importation, transportation, spatial cross subsidy and others. Pressure from various stakeholders of government to revamp the four refineries so as to stop product importation pushed the NNPC to earmark the refineries for privatisation as soon as they are rehabilitated. Government has also issued licences for private refineries to encourage private sector participation in refining. � 2004 @ Champion Newspapers Limited (All Right Reserved). Powered By dnetsystems.net dnet�

	BNW News
Voice of Biafra | Biafra World | Biafra Online | Biafra Web | MASSOB | Biafra Forum | BLM | Biafra Consortium
	© 2001 BNW BiafraNigeriaWorld  Privacy Policy ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Powered by ACENetwork ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	Axiom PSI Yam Festival Series, Iri Ji Nd'Igbo the Kola-Nut Series,Nigeria Masterweb