President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Oil), Heineken Lokpobiri, has urged the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) to scrap the public-owned Port Harcourt, Kaduna and Warri refineries.
Instead, Lokpobiri, who deputises Tinubu in the petroleum ministry, urged the NNPCL to buy a bigger stake in the new private-owned Dangote Refinery.
Initially eyeing a 20 percent stake in the Dangote Refinery, NNPC ended up paying up for only 7.2 percent of its original allotment.
Lokpobiri spoke on Tuesday at the ongoing Crude Oil Refinery-Owners Association of Nigeria Summit in Lagos.
Represented by Dangana Tende, Deputy Director of Upstream at the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, Lokpobiri declared that the government would ensure that deregulation was implemented 100 percent.
“We urge the state oil company to take equity in the other upcoming refineries rather than running refineries. We would ensure that downstream deregulation is 100 percent,” he said.
Nigeria’s four refineries, with a cumulative capacity of 445,000 barrels of crude oil daily, have remained moribund for the last 24 years despite huge investments in turnaround maintenance.
Despite several broken deadlines, NNPC has failed to roll out petroleum products from the Port Harcourt Refinery.
