The Vice President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, made a veiled reference to the issue yesterday at the opening of a conference organised by the Senate Committee on Petroleum Resources (Down-stream) in Abuja.

But the Federal Government said that there would be no increase in prices of petroleum products without due consultation with stakeholders. The government also said the December 31, 2007 deadline for the nation's refineries to work at full capacity was no longer feasible. Represented at the conference by the Minister of State for Petroleum, Mr. Henry Odein Ajumogobia, the vice president said subsidies being paid by the Federal Government on imported petroleum products were on the increase.

"The December deadline for repair of the refineries is no longer feasible. We all know that we buy fuel at the fuel station at N70 per litre. It used to be N65; there was an attempt to increase the pump price to N75; we all know the result of that and government went back to the compromise pump price of N70," he said. According to him, "Today, the price of crude oil is hovering very close to the notional $100 mark. I don't know why it is the $100 that we picked as the significant mark but, it is the mark everybody is afraid of. It has not yet got there, but it is there. The retail price of petroleum products inevitably tracks the price of barrels of crude in the international market. If the price of crude gets higher so does the price of petroleum products that we import to the country. It means that the amount of money that government pays on subsidy increases with the price of crude. It also means that as long as petroleum prices are regulated in our country, those who may have an interest in participating in the downstream may have a constraint."