08 June 2017, Sweetcrude, Lagos — The Federal Government, Thursday, said it has neither concessioned nor has it in any way disposed of any of Nigeria’s refineries to any business concern.
Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu, addressing newsmen in Abuja, stated that so far, no financier have been selected to revamp the refineries as planned.
He said what has happened is that adverts were merely placed in some national and international newspapers in April last year seeking financiers to fund, rehabilitate and jointly operate the refineries to increase their capacity utilization and that nowhere in those adverts was it stated that there would be a transfer of any of those assets to any eventual successful financiers.
Giving a chronology of efforts by the Federal Government to rehabilitate the ailing refineries and put them on stream, he said the tender process for financiers was truncated in May last year following concerns raised by the National Assembly and the Bureau for Public Enterprise, a concern that was thrashed out and an understanding reached that the rehabilitation process would not adversely impact any future FGN privatization initiatives.
He said further that following that understanding, a presidential approval was granted the NNPC in October to engage credible financiers to rehabilitate and improve the performance of the three refineries and that three possible partners- Agip/Saudis/ Qataris— were initially identified for engagements.
Kachikwu disclosed that as at today, efforts are still on to engage a pool of financiers after cost estimates for the refineries rehabilitation are firmed up later in the month.
With regard to the co-location of refineries, the Minister said that a public tender was announced in April last year and bids were received and analysed and winners for the Port-Harcourt and Warri refineries have been identified but that discussions are still on-going to finalise the process with approval to be given by both the NNPC Board and the Federal Executive Council.
Kachikwu painted a very sad picture of the massive import of petroleum products costing trillions of Naira which the nation has engaged in in the past few years as a result of its poor domestic refining capacity and said that efforts geared towards revamping the existing refineries are meant to save the country huge foreign exchange and the trillions of Naira spent on fuel imports.
He identified other goals of his 7 Big Wins, a short and medium term initiative meant to confront current petroleum products supply challenges which President Muhammadu Buhari launched in October last year, to include: transiting Nigeria from a massive importer of petroleum products to a net exporter by the end of 2019; opening up investment opportunities in the mid-downstream sector; stabilizing products supply across the length and breadth of the country, achieving stability of prices of petroleum products nationwide; increasing the country’s GDP and creating millions of jobs.