Fg Needs $500m To Fix Local Refineries

BEVERLY HILLS, March 10, (THEWILL) –  Ibe Kachukwu, Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, has revealed that between $300 million and $500 million would be required to fix the nation’s four refineries in Warri, Port Harcourt and Kaduna for effective service delivery.

Kachukwu, who doubles as the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), made the statement on Thursday, while interfacing with the joint House of Representatives’ Committee on Gas Resources, Petroleum (Downstream and Upstream) and Local Content, chaired by Victor Nwokolo, over the crisis trailing the media report on unbundling of NNPC to 30 companies.

The minister, who acknowledged the communication gap between his office and the National Assembly, observed that the concerns were legitimate.

He revealed that the “unbundling was used to qualify the sub-sects,” otherwise called Divisions, and not companies, as would have been applicable to the actual unbundling of the corporation, as stipulated in the PIB.

The minister explained that 17 subsidiaries of NNPC have been identified and that additional four were created adding that the administrative restructuring would help in generating more jobs, profitability and efficiency of various sub-sects of the corporation, including gas and power, property, pipeline and refineries, among others.

Kachukwu observed that 70 percent of the N350 billion losses incurred by the corporation came from PPMC, adding that plans were underway to adopt the Public Private Partnership (PPP) model in the bid to boost the viability of the NNPC subsidiaries.

According to him, the corporation is on the verge of finalising arrangement with an American company to maintain the NNPC medical centres; also that negotiation has reached an advance stage, with the world’s largest shipping company, to drive the NNPC shipping company established over the past eight years without owning a vessel.

He assured that the corporation has no plan to sack the 10,000 workers on its payroll but that the administrative restructuring would help to put the 3,000 redundant staff in the competency venture.

Story by David Oputah