Federal Government has revealed that it will make public the names of the four companies that successfully bided to operate Modular Refineries to enable them take off operation.
Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, gave this revelation Monday in Abuja as part of ongoing sensitization campaign on the deregulation of the downstream sector of the nation’s petroleum industry.
Mohammed said when fully operational, the nation will be able to refine 650,000 barrels per day of petrol from the refineries while Dangote Refinery will also add 750,000.
The minister also disclosed that the NNPC was heading for bankruptcy because it became the sole importer of over 90 percent of petroleum products consumed by Nigerians shortly before the recent deregulation.
He disclosed that NNPC was spending about $550 Million and needed about $600m to continue fuel importation, before the current government intervention in the sector to save the firm from bankruptcy.
He said further that the nation could not afford to open letters of credit for the fuel importers because of the dwindling income from crude oil.
”We did not have enough foreign exchange to open letters of credit for people to import fuel, we must never be pushed to a situation in which we are forced to subsidize fuel prices again in this country, because even if prices of crude oil improves, there are a lot of things we can do with the money to ameliorate the sufferings of our people”
“We have no choice but to deregulate the price of petrol at the rate we were going”
The minister debunked insinuations that what government did was to remove subsidy from petroleum products adding that ” there was no subsidy in the first place”
”One Trillion Naira was paid out as subsidy last year, therefore, in the 2016 budget, government refused to make provision for subsidy”
“From October last year, NNPC has been responsible for over 90% of fuel consumed, while 445,000 barrels was being exchanged for fuel by NNPC”
“Activities of Militants have further reduced government earnings and production volumes reduced to 1.65mbpd as against the projected 2.2Mbpd”
