The federal government said on Wednesday that it has
no plans to concession or sell the refineries in the
country.
President Muhammadu Buhari said this while declaring
open the 5th triennial national delegates’ conference
of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff
Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) on Wednesday in
Abuja.
Buhari, who was represented by Ibe Kachikwu, the
minister of state for petroleum resources, said that it
was imperative to make the clarification.
He said that there has been no attempt and there is
no approval to concession refineries or sell refineries.
“I keep hearing discussions all over the place,
especially from people who should know better. What
we have approval for is to bring in a financing
mechanism that will enable us to finance and develop
and upgrade the refineries as they are,” he said.
“The reality is that once private sector players begin to
build their own refineries, whatever we are afraid of will
disappear.
“And unless we begin to move very rapidly and quickly
to position these refineries in such a way that they can
compete, we will lose the refineries completely together
with the job scale that exist there right now.
“My drive is to see that those investments goes
through a transparent process and the announcement
that you hear about selection has not happened.”
The president, however, said there was need to bring
in fund and best practices that would elevate the
institutions to the level where they should work for the
country as the nation was losing money.
Buhari decried the drop in the oil price, saying that the
prices have tumbled and have continued to struggle in
spite of all the works done in Organisation of the
Petroleum Exporting Countries(OPEC) to stabilise
price.
He also noted that that investments are declining at
an alarming rate and there are new entrants into the
industry.
According to him, only those who are able to look at
their technology and new ways of doing business are
going to survive the oil industry of tomorrow.
“As it concerns Nigeria, we must work inclusively hard
to deal with some of the difficulties that we will
continue to see in our production platforms.
“Whether it is the militants which is a key component
or the slow speed of approvals or whether the fact that
our policies are not even as fast as they should to
catch up with changing times.
“We have to influence policies and we have got to
work extremely hard to help drive the change that is
imperative is the sector to survive. Infrastructural
deficit is a key component.
“We lack infrastructure in the sector, whether it is
downstream or upstream or oil and gas. The absence
of infrastructure has made it impossible to have a
holistic private sector participation.
“We have got to find policies that will encourage
private sector participants to play a key role. coupled
with that is the fact that countries are moving away
from oil,” he said.
The president called on the union to see other
opportunities in terms of job creation and employment
in the oil sector.
He also called on them to see gas as the future new
horizon of opportunity for the country and urged them
to take advantage of it.
TheCable
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