The Minister of State for Petroleum, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, has said the modular refineries the federal government is proposing to establish would not address the challenge of fuel deficit in the country.
He, however, said it would essentially address the menace of illegal crude oil refining rampant in the Niger Delta, while saving the environment and providing more legal opportunist for the youth of the area.
Kachikwu made this known while briefing state house correspondents after the Federal Executive Council meeting on Wednesday.
He pointed out that Nigeria’s dependence on importation of petrol would be adequately checked by refurbishing existing four refineries to full production capacity by 2019 as well the oncoming Dangote Refinery in Lagos, the proposed Nigeria/Niger joint refinery and another private refinery under construction.
According to him, “As a seasoned professional I have given all the guidance that is required to fix the refineries, we came into a situation where we don’t have money to fix the refineries we had to raise the money looking into the PPP model, it has to go through a process.
“The technical committee is headed by NNPC, obviously they will submit their report to the board when they complete their work. So, from a governance and guidance sense, steering point of view, I think that steering is right on track, from a management of the technical aspect of the contracting, that is something we would have to allow NNPC handle, it is not the job of the ministry to superimpose, you got to let them do their work and do it efficiently.
“On modular refineries; modular wasn’t supposed to provide a sufficient solution to your product needs, modulars are on the average between 2000 and 5000 maybe 10,000 at most capacity per refinery. Your consumption is about 630,000 barrels per day, that is not the essence of modular, what modular was supposed to do for us is provide work within some of these communities where people are busy doing illegal refining.
“It’s not meant to address the refining product gap we have in the country, we are hoping that those gaps will be covered by a mixture of the three or four refineries that government owns currently, Warri, Port Harcourt and Kaduna and of course the Dangote refinery of 600 barrels.”
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