The new Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mele Kyari, has promised to repair Nigeria’s four national refineries before 2023.
HE also pledged to show immense support to ensure the delivery of the Dangote Refinery by the first quarter of 2020.
Amongst the things he vowed to achieve before President Muhammadu Buhari complete his tenure, was ensuring that the country achieves its production target of 3 million barrel per day and also grow its reserves.
Nairametrics reported that the new NNPC boss has formally taken over the helm of affairs from the former GMD, Makanti Baru.
[READ MORE: Dangote Refinery will export fuel to Ghana, other countries.]
Importance of having functional refineries: The refineries across the country are either non-functioning or underperforming. The Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna plants have been almost non-functional due to poor maintenance culture and a profound difficulty for the country to sustain the industrial ethics needed for large-scale refining.
While Dangote Refinery is poised to alleviate the national and regional shortages of petroleum products, it should be of common knowledge that there is need for more functional refineries to serve the general public.
Nairametrics understands that some government policies and strategies put in place may have influenced the decline the country experienced in the importation of refined petroleum products, even as Nigerians consume an average of 53.2m litres of PMS daily.
[READ ALSO: NNPC targets 30% downstream market share by 2020.]
Is NNPC committed to ending petroleum importation? In recent months, the NNPC has been premeditating plans to stop the importation of refined petroleum product into Nigeria. Specifically, the NNPC has repeatedly spoken of its resolve to completely stop the importation of refined petroleum product into Nigeria by December 2019.
The Corporation sees the stoppage of refined petroleum products importation as the appropriate policy move to pave way for the rehabilitation of the local refineries in Warri, Port Harcourt, and Kaduna, thereby domestically refining the required volume of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) for local consumption.
