Depot and Petroleum Products Marketers Association of Nigeria (DAPPMAN) says the lawsuit filed by the Dangote Petroleum Refinery seeking to void fuel import licences issued to marketers and the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) could destabilise Nigeria’s downstream petroleum sector.
On 25 March the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) eased petrol import restrictions by granting a new batch of licences to local marketers.
Two months later, Dangote refinery filed a fresh suit before the federal high court in Lagos, challenging import licences issued or renewed by the NMDPRA to fuel marketers.
The refinery argued that the licences breached an earlier court order maintaining the status quo and contravening provisions of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), which it said permits fuel imports only when domestic supply is insufficient.
Reacting to the refiner’s suit in a statement issued on Sunday, DAPPMAN said the import licences issued by the NMDPRA are critical to maintaining Nigeria’s fuel supply chain and ensuring energy security.
‘The import licences at the centre of this lawsuit are not administrative courtesies. They are the legal instruments through which Nigeria’s fuel supply chain functions’, the association said.
DAPPMAN said the licences were issued under the framework of the PIA by a regulator empowered to make such determinations.
‘The NMDPRA has consistently maintained, correctly, that these licences exist to protect supply security, not to disadvantage any single producer, however large’, the statement reads.
‘Legal Action Introduces Uncertainty In Downstream Sector’
The association said its members had invested billions of naira in depot infrastructure, logistics, and compliance systems based on the validity of the licences.
‘A legal action designed to retroactively void those licences does not just affect individual businesses, it introduces uncertainty into the entire downstream supply chain at a moment when Nigeria can least afford it’, DAPPMAN said.
The marketers added that while it respects the refinery’s right to seek legal remedies, no private refinery’s commercial interests should supersede the regulator’s responsibility to guarantee adequate fuel supply to Nigerians.
‘What we do not accept is the premise that a private refinery’s commercial interests should override a regulatory authority’s mandate to ensure adequate supply to Nigerian consumers’, the association said.
‘The downstream sector works because multiple players operate within it. A lawsuit that seeks to reduce that field of players is ultimately a lawsuit against Nigerian consumers’.
DAPPMAN added that Nigeria’s downstream market is designed to operate as a competitive system involving multiple participants rather than a monopoly structure.
