Kachikwu says FG won’t invest, privatise, concession refineries

THE Federal Government, through the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr Ibe Kachikwu, has stated that it will no longer invest in the repairs of the country’s refineries, neither would it concession them nor privatise them.

According to a statement by the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, made available on Tuesday to journalists, Kachikwu stated that rather than concession or privatise the refineries, the government would encourage private sector investment and subsequent joint ownership and management of the facilities for greater efficiency.

Kachikwu, who was addressing members of the House Committee on Downstream who were on an oversight visit to the Ministry, explained that the Federal Government was working hard to bring in private investment capital to strengthen the refineries in order to boost the nation’s local refining capacity.

“For the purpose of efficient management of the refineries, government money will not be committed to the refineries any more. Prospective private investors will bring in their money, take part in managing the refineries and from there recoup their investment,” he said.

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is set to embark on a comprehensive rehabilitation of the nation’s three refineries located in Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna to achieve optimal capacity utilization in the new year.

Speaking at the Annual General Meetings of the three refineries in Abuja on Tuesday, the Chief Operating Officer (COO), Refineries, NNPC, Anibor Kragha, stated that the Corporation was determined to move away from the approach of quick fixes and undertake a comprehensive revamp of the plants.

“The plan for next year is to get the comprehensive rehabilitation programme done. The situation is like having three cars in your garage that have not been maintained for 15 to 20 years while you expect optimal performance from them. Changing one fuel pump here, one compressor there is not helpful. What we are doing now is to step back and take a holistic approach and do a full rehabilitation of all the refineries,” Kragha stated.

He noted that once the exercise was achieved, the refineries in due course would draw up a chart for routine Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) Programme as and when due.

On the earlier plan to have other refineries co-located with the existing refineries, Kragha explained that though the plan was still on course, non- of the projected co-location refineries would come on stream in 2017 based on existing timeline for assemblage of the plants.