Ibe Kachukwu, minister of state for petroleum resources, on Thursday, disclosed 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 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.
At the meeting, the lawmakers and the minister resolved to work in harmony towards the timely passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB).
The minister, who acknowledged the communication gap between his office and the National Assembly, observed that the concerns were legitimate.
He however said 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.
He also assured that the restructuring of NNPC would help in achieving 16 to 18 month self-sufficiency of supply of Petroleum products, as well as the establishment of the modular type refineries by investors, as contained in the recent advert placed by the corporation.
He said when the 650,000 refinery planned by Dangote Group comes on-stream by 2020, it would boost domestic refining capacity, adding that the policy was to drive the oil marketers to invest in the industry going forward.
The minister explained that 17 subsidiaries of NNPC have been identified and that additional four were created, and 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 and the 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 disengage the 10,000 workers on its payroll but added that the administrative restructuring would help to put the 3,000 redundant staff in the competency venture.
