04 July 2017, Sweetcrude, Abuja – The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu, has said the nation’s three refineries in Warri, Kaduna and Port Harcourt could become obsolete in the next three to four years, hence the move by the government to repair and upgrade them.
Speaking at the 5th Triennial National Delegates’ Conference of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, PENGASSAN, Kachikwu stressed that no attempt had been made to sell the nation’s refineries.
“There has been no attempt, no approval to concession refineries or sell. What we have approval for is to bring financing mechanisms that enable us to find the resource to upgrade the refineries.
“In their present epileptic nature, they would probably be obsolete in the next three to four years. The reality is that once the private sector players begin to build their own refineries, whatever we think we are concessioning, will disappear. Unless we move very quickly to reposition those refineries in such a way that they can compete, we would lose the refineries completely,” he said.
Kachikwu stated that the financing mechanisms for the refineries would pass through the board of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, in a competitive and transparent manner, adding that all the processes would be done with the management of the refineries and NNPC in place.
The minister declared that oil and gas are changing transformatively with the tumbling of prices below $46 despite the intervention of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC.
He stressed that Nigerians must work inclusively to deal with the difficulties that are happening in the industry whether militancy, slow speed of approvals and policies that must now move as fast as they should.
