Crude oil prices have risen to $121 per barrel on Monday, 30 May, as the rising cost of Automotive Gas Oil (AGO), known as diesel, continues in Nigeria, with the average price of the product selling for N780 per litre in some stations and is as high as N790 per litre in some of them.
The product’s high price is worsened by the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war that led to severe supply chain challenges.
The international benchmark Brent crude hits $122.20 per barrel, which is the highest in months and around a $100 per barrel increase since March 2020, highlighting an increase of $120.50 per barrel that it sold on Monday.
The rally in worldwide crude oil prices comes as supplies of refined products like diesel stay tight during a time when demand is expected to pick up in the US and many other nations with lesser export of the product from Russia, which has been hit with sanctions by the western countries because of the invasion of Ukraine.
The rise is also despite the EU’s failure to attain any agreement among its members on a Russian crude oil ban, with Hungary still holding out for reasonable terms.
On the other hand, in Nigeria, the increase in crude oil prices and the continuous depreciation of the naira have persisted, leading to a dramatic increase in the pump cost of diesel at gas filling stations around the country.
The surge in the product’s price depicts around a 174% increase in the last four months, compared to the N288 per lire that it sold during January this year, as per the figure released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
The rising cost of diesel has been wholly deregulated because the federal government no longer fix prices but enables market forces to determine that it has forced households and businesses to take drastic steps or seek alternatives to persist operations.
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