COPEC considering court action should OMC’s fail to review oil prices

Following the recent drop of crude oil prices on the international market, the Chamber of Petroleum Consumers Ghana (COPEC) says it is considering filing a court action by the end of this week against Oil Marketing Companies (OMC’s) should they fail to review oil prices to reflect the domestic market.

According to COPEC, it expects a 10 percent reduction in petroleum prices from OMC’s at the various pumps across the country.

This follows oil prices plummeting around 30 percent on Monday, March 9 after Saudi Arabia and Russia slashed its official selling prices and set plans for a dramatic increase in crude production next month, starting a price war even as spread of the coronavirus erodes global demand growth.

Executive Director of COPEC, Duncan Amoah explaining the rationale behind the move said; “We are saying that there is every justification for the prices at the pumps to be reduced. If this is not done by the end of the week, we will have no option but to go to court. I don’t think the court will allow the OMCs to cheat the public,” he said in an interview on a local radio station.

“If we use today’s price, then the fall in the International price of crude oil is more than 50 percent since the beginning of the year. We have seen also the cedi appreciate also for more than 5.6 percent from the beginning of the year, yet the local price has not gone down by more than 5 percent from the beginning of the year,” he stressed.

COPEC argues that hence the local pump price has not gone down since the beginning of the year and despite the cedi’s relative stability compared to other trading currencies, the drop in global prices should give consumers in Ghana some kind of relief.