Two of Nigeria’s four refineries will restart production in the next
two weeks, the minister of state for petroleum resources, Ibe Kachikwu,
has said.
Although the minister did not disclose the two refineries, this would
be something to cheer by
Nigerians, who have been facing a raw deal in
recent times getting steady supply of petrol.
With all the refineries operating at fits and start for a long time,
Mr. Kachikwu, on assumption of office as the Group Managing Director of
the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, had set December 2015
deadline for the four refineries at Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna to
become fully functional to guarantee uninterrupted fuel supply in the
country.
Although the NNPC monthly operations report showed that all the four
refineries had a combined capacity utilization rate of only 1.96 per
cent in September, the situation worsened in October, as the report for
the month showed that none of the refineries was producing fuel.
Speaking to some members of the National Assembly on Wednesday in
Abuja, the minister expressed confidence that two of the refineries
would be re-streamed for production before the end of the month.
“Available reports before me indicate that two of the refineries may
be re-streamed before the end of December, 2015,” Mr. Kachikwu said.
To ensure that a permanent solution was found to the perennial fuel
scarcity problem the country has been facing, Mr. Kachikwu said efforts
were on to engage private investors to build new refineries.
The new refineries would be located within the premises of the
existing ones to enable benefit from the economy of scale, by sharing
some operational facilities, such as power, pipelines and other
resources.
The minister, who made a presentation on ‘The Roadmap for Nigeria’s
Oil and Gas Sector,’ said the average national oil production capacity
as at July 2015 stood at about 2.1 million barrels per day, with the
Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC) equity production at about
99,000 bpd.
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