'Warri, Kaduna refineries to resume production in December'
From Madu Onuorah, Abuja
MINISTER of State for Petroleum, Odein Ajumogobia (SAN), yesterday declared that the Kaduna and Warri refineries are now fully rehabilitated and are awaiting the supply of crude oil to jumpstart production of petroleum products by the middle of December.
Ajumogobia noted that once the two refineries start production, the importation of petroleum products would be reduced by 40 per cent.
He noted that the nation spends about N45 billion a month on importation of 18 million litres of fuel a day, the amount consumed daily in Nigeria.
According to him, "Kaduna and Warri refineries have been rehabilitated. We are just trying to get crude. The pipelines are still bad. Once the pipelines are repaired hopefully by the middle of December, the work would have been through. So, crude would now go to Warri and Kaduna. Apart from that, I would like to go and see myself."
He ruled out any plan by the Federal Government to build new refineries, saying "the government cannot afford it. And no private investor would want to invest when he is not sure of getting returns on investment. That is why we are pushing for the deregulation. And as soon as we deregulate the market, you will see new refineries. In fact, you will see increased capacity. Just like Liquefied Natural Gas, you will see people who will build small refineries, say for 5,000 barrels to serve their community, and so on. And there will be others who will build 500,000 to one million, five million refinery capacity. Why? Because they will dedicate part of it for local consumption and they will export the rest to make their money.
"It is only then we can now talk about bringing the price down. We can say: 'Okay, we have so much crude oil' and we can dedicate it to the refineries as recovery cost. But if we should do it now, it means we are halving our revenue and Nigeria is relying 90 per cent on crude oil. For those who say we should just give it free, basically what we are going to do is that we are halving our budget. The budget of N3 trillion will now be N1.5 trillion. The current expenditure is over N1.5 trillion."
Meanwhile, the Lagos State government has appealed to members of the public not to engage in panic buying and storage of fuel in the homes.
The Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Mr. Opeyemi Bamidele, made the appeal yesterday in his office.
Bamidele noted that storage of fuel in plastic containers and other materials or in any form could be extremely dangerous at this time of the year. He added that people are won't to store fuel at home in anticipation of price increase or fuel shortage in the country.
He affirmed that "storing petrol in cars, workplaces or more importantly at homes present a potential hazard." He explained that fuel gives off vapour, which is extremely flammable and must be treated with the utmost care.
While calling on petroleum marketers to prevail on their dealers to dispense fuel from all available pumps to motorists in order to avoid long queues and obstruction of traffic in the state, Bamidele further appealed to the fuel dealers not to push Lagosians to take steps that could lead to fire hazards.
He disclosed that government has directed the Lagos State Task Force on Environmental Offences to monitor fuel marketers and buyers to prevent hoarding.
