By Moses Patience Chat
The House of Representatives has advised the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited to consider outsourcing the management of the country’s government-owned refineries to a third party after repairs.
This was made known in a report issued on Tuesday in Abuja by the House of Reps Ad Hoc Committee on NNPC Limited Assets and Liabilities. The report stated that Nigeria spent more than $10 billion, which is about N4.8 trillion, from 2010 to 2020 on the management of three oil refineries that barely produce any fuel.
“By the time these refineries were put into rehabilitation, they had almost stopped functioning and their output had not exceeded 30 percent since 2010. This has pushed Nigeria to entirely depend on imported fuel product whose price was kept artificially low by fuel subsidies,” the report read in part.
It also noted that NNPC is currently rehabilitating its 210,000-barrel-per-day refinery complex in Port Harcourt and Warri through contracts worth more than $2 billion with Italy’s Maire Tecnimont and South Korea’s Daewoo Engineering & Construction Company, respectively. The two refineries are expected to begin operations before the end of 2023.
However, the House advised NNPC Limited to consider outsourcing the management of the refineries to international oil firms that will help manage and maintain them once they have been completely repaired.