By Nneka Nwogwugwu
Director-General, Bureau of Public Enterprises, Alex Okoh, has informed that the federal government has dropped privatisation plan, which was part of the organisation’s 2021 plan.
Okoh, who spoke to journalists in Abuja while presenting updates on the bureau’s 2021 work plan, said all the refineries under the NNPC management were in various stages of non-production.
He said as quoted by the Punch, “We have four refineries with refining capacity of 445,000 barrels per day and they are all at various stages of non-production. I don’t have the figures correctly, but I think that Warri would be around five per cent, Port Harcourt around 19 (or) 20 per cent and Kaduna is zero.
“Our plan initially was to suggest to the Federal Government that we should privatise these refineries, no need to put in more money, especially given the fact that you also have private investors going into the space.
“Dangote (Refinery) is looking at about 650,000 barrels per day, so the combined refining capacity for all of our four refineries is not even up to that. This means you are going into a space where competition will almost kill you.
“So we thought we should privatise, but NNPC believes that the plants can be rehabilitated and they have got the government approval to go ahead and rehabilitate the refineries.”
In January 2021, the Minister of Finance, Budget and National, Zainab Ahmed, told lawmakers that the Federal Government would sell selected properties to fund this year’s budget.
The BPE had earlier in the year itemised Nigeria’s refineries as assets to be privatised and classified them as core investor sale, but the amount to be earned from the facilities was not stated as at then.
