The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Ibe Kachikwu has disclosed that the country requires about $1.2 billion (N377.7bn) to effect repairs of three refineries owned by the NNPC. Kachikwu made this known on Thursday in Abuja while interacting with newsmen.
“We need about 1.2 billion dollars to repair and bring the three refineries of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) in Port Harcourt, Warri, and Kaduna, up to 100 percent production level. The total cumulative amount is in the 1.1 billion dollars and 1.2 billion dollars category between all the refineries. And that, of course, does not include the pipelines. You have got to address the pipelines and that is something else that is being done.”
The Minister refuted widespread reports that the Ministry had already concluded plans to concession the refineries explaining that the Committee set up to review the whole exercise was yet to submit its report. He however disclosed that some companies had already indicated interest for the concession, “We have not selected any firm yet even though some firms have shown interests." he added.
On the amount of money the government spent in the importation of refined petroleum product in 2016, Kachikwu stated that “a total amount of N3.4 trillion was spent, the consumption of FX from CBN was approximately 30 percent of CBN total FX outlay, and the logistic costs of that importation was about N1.34 trillion within the same one-year period.”
