NNPC to Commence Full Repair of Refineries Next Year

By NIPC Intelligence

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has slated a comprehensive rehabilitation of the nation’s three refineries located in Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna to achieve optimal capacity utilization for next year.

The Chief Operating Officer (COO), Refineries, of the NNPC, Mr. Anibor Kragha, at the Annual General Meeting of the three facilities in Abuja, yesterday, stated that the corporation was determined to move away from the approach of quick fixes and undertake a comprehensive rehabilitation 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.

Meanwhile, after one year of experimenting with non-petroleum revenue for budget financing in the country, the managers of the country’s economy have returned to oil reliance budget financing.

The experimentation with the non-oil revenue sources as the cornerstone of budget financing was undertaken in the current 2016 Federal Budget which implementation is expected to wind down in May next year. It was planned to be led by non-petroleum revenue resources projected to fetch the country N1.45 trillion while oil mineral resources was projected at a cautionary level of N820 billion.

Oil mineral proceeds now have a larger projected revenue target of N1.985 trillion, while non-oil conversely now has a lower projection of N1.373 trillion.

Offering more insight into the policy shift at a briefing yesterday, the Minister of Budget and National Planning, Udoma Udo Udoma, said that revenue expectations from the non-oil window fell grossly below their targets and seriously impinged of the implementation of the 2016 budget.

He said: “ The projected independent revenue was N1.1 trillion as against N0.2 trillion realised during the period. The projected revenue for Customs was N0.3 trillion as against N0.2 trillion realised, while the projected non-oil tax receipts for the 1st – Q3 of 2016 is N0.8 trillion as against N0.5 trillion realised during the period.”

Source: < Guardian NG >