Chineme Okafor in Abuja
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) reportedly spent a whopping $396.33 million between 2013 and 2017 – a period of four years, to carryout repair works under the Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) scheme on three of its decrepit refineries in Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna, a new report has disclosed.
Presented to journalists and civil society organisations (CSOs) at a workshop thursday, the report – ‘Reducing losses from refinery operations’, which reviewed the operations of NNPC’s refineries from a cost perspective, efficiency and value for money was undertaken by the Nigeria Natural Resource Charter (NNRC).
The NNRC implements the Natural Resource Charter (NRC) in Nigeria, which is a set of principles intended for use by governments, societies, and the international community to determine how best to manage natural resource wealth for the benefit of current and future generations of citizens. Its activities are equally funded by the United Kingdom.
The NNRC report also indicated that the NNPC spent N276.872 billion on the operating expenses of the refineries between 2015 and 2018, as well as $36 billion on petroleum products importation between 2013 and 2017.
According to the report, NNPC’s three refineries contribute less than 10 per cent to Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) annually.
It also noted that they are amongst the league of refineries with the highest operating costs worldwide, adding that their consolidated capacity utilisation dropped to 6.1 per cent at the end of September 2017.
NNRC indicated that in addition to other sources, it got data for the research on the refineries’ operations from the monthly operations reports of the NNPC, adding that, the strategic goal of establishing local refining facilities and its associated supply chain as a socio-economic game-changer that results in national development has continued to elude Nigeria’s oil and gas industry.
It further explained the $36 billion the country spent on importing petroleum products in four years could have built for her four brand new refineries of similar capacity with the 650,000 barrels per day processing Dangote refinery in Lagos.
Nigeria, it added would have also been able to produce up to 200 million litres per day of fuel from these refineries if they had been built with the $36 billion spent for importation of petroleum products.
The NNRC in the report equally recommended to the federal government to divest up to75 per cent of its shareholding in the three refineries which have the capacity to refine 445,000 barrels of oil, to competent investors under a transparent and fair bidding process.
