The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) says it
would no longer be involved in managing the refineries after the rehabilitation
exercise.
Mele Kyari, the corporation’s group managing director, said
it would engage the services of a company that would manage the refineries on
an operations and maintenance basis.
“We are going to get an O&M contract, NNPC won’t run it.
We are going to get a firm that will guarantee that this plant would run for
some time,” Kennie Obateru, NNPC spokesman, quoted him to have said in an
interview with Arise TV.
“We want to try a different model of getting this refinery
to run. And we are going to apply this process for the running of the other two
refineries.”
Kyari also explained that the ultimate goal is to adopt the
Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Limited (NLNG) model where private partners would
decide the fate of the refineries.
Also speaking on Channels TV, the NNPC boss said eliminating
the petrol subsidy would free up funds to develop basic infrastructure in the
education, health, transport, and other sectors for the benefit of the
citizenry.
“Subsidy is elitist because it is the elites that benefit
from it. They are the ones that have SUVs, four, five cars in their garages.
The masses should be the ones to benefit,” he said.
“There are many things wrong with the under-recovery because
it makes us supply more than is needed. This makes the under-recovery to be
bloated because we unwittingly subsidize fuel for the whole of West Africa.
That has to stop.”
Subsidy removal, he also said, would correct cases of
smuggling and product arbitrage in the market adding that it would also provide
the needed impetus for the NNPC to establish retail outlets in neighbouring
countries.
On the agitation in some quarters for a reduction in the
price of kerosene, he said the corporation’s focus was rather on how to migrate
all those who were still using kerosene for domestic cooking to the use of
Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) which is popularly referred to as cooking gas.
According to him, apart from LPG being a cheaper fuel than
kerosene, it is also safer and more environment-friendly.
Click to signup for FREE news updates, latest information and hottest gists everyday
Advertise on NigerianEye.com to reach thousands of our daily users
No comments
Post a Comment
Kindly drop a comment below.
(Comments are moderated. Clean comments will be approved immediately)
Advert Enquires - Reach out to us at NigerianEye@gmail.com