Nigeria Fuel scarcity/price increase: Lawmakers failed Nigerians?
By Ifeanyi Izeze
iizeze@yahoo.com
n lawmakers on Tuesday, December 23, actually surprised the entire citizenry when they feigned ignorance over the declaration of the NNPC GMD, Mr Funso Kupolokun that the country depends 100 percent on imported refined petroleum products for its fuel needs. That clearly shows how far removed our supposed representatives are from the workings of our economy and the reality on ground.
Since the beginning of the second tenure of this administration in 2003, the country has been running on 100 per cent imported fuels but was successfully deceived by this same NNPC chieftain and the Presidency into believing that Warri and Port Harcourt refineries were running at about 65 per cent and that the nation only imported about 28 per cent of its domestic fuel needs.
It is disheartening that the NNPC GMD chose to deceive the entire country by deliberately covering the truth and even distorting available facts. This only goes to buttress the fact that the NNPC chieftain actually went out of ideas on how to run the apex oil concern since 2003 but was still kept in office as a stooge to the powers that be who have been buffeting on the nation’s oil business.
In ernest, the current very shameful state of the nation’s fuel supply situation is a clear exoneration of the former NNPC GMD Dr Jackson Gaius Obaseki who was sacked from office through political rascality by this administration only to be replaced by a man who is either so scared to directly take technical decisions in his parastatal or remotely controlled through the political stronghold that called him back from retirement.
The NNPC boss was bold to tell lawmakers that all the nation’s three refineries in Warri, Kaduna and Port Harcourt were closed. And that Nigeria is importing all of its fuel because its oil refineries are not working, even though $1 billion has been spent on turn around maintenance of the plants since 2000.
As if the insult on Nigerians was not enough, the NNPC administrator was quoted as haven told the lawmakers’ inquest on the two-month old fuel crisis that "vandalisation was the crux of the matter."
According to Kopolokun, “The 125,000 barrel-a-day Warri refinery and the 110,000 barrel-a-day Kaduna plant were closed last February after militants, fighting for local control of the Niger Delta's oil wealth, blew up the main feeder pipeline. The 210,000 barrel-a-day Port Harcourt plant was closed last month due to technical problems.
"We have spent about $1 billion to revamp the refineries but when some people decide to bomb crude lines and oil pipelines, there is very little the NNPC can do to help the situation.
"When two of the nation's refineries are completely out, we have to do a lot of hopping around here and there to ensure that products are available for Nigerians to use."
The NNPC boss would have rather said: we have to do a lot of shady deals when we have successfully ensured the death and burial of all the three refineries in Nigeria .
The NNPC Chieftain should explain to Nigerians: Which of the three refineries ever worked up to 25 per cent installed capacity since he assumed office under the Presidency? The Kaduna plant died even before the crude feedstock trunk lines were tampered with.
The plant only managed to crack the crude into few distillation fractions which were used to deceive Nigerians that the plant was running. But as in all cases of deceit, it did not take long for the truth to manifest as the plant was thrown into the problem of evacuating the-not-readily-useful sludge distillates which subsequently knocked-off the already shameful and epileptic performance of the refinery.
The case of the Warri Plant was even more pathetic under this administration. The plant has been subjected to an eternal and cyclic sequence of turnaround maintenances with each causing more problems and leaving the plant worse than before.
So to claim that the Warri and Kaduna refineries were shut down because of destruction of the supply line by Niger Delta militants was a mischief.
The pipeline problem was there, I fully agree but the bigger problem was the death and rest-in- pieces of the two plants. This is the truth.
Port Harcourt II was the only plant that managed to turn out some products as a refinery but was also flogged to the extent that the un-maintained plant completely broke down some years ago.
The NNPC managed to cover this up from Nigerians by massively importing fuel products through offshore bridging that exploited the availability of a receptor facility (similar to the Atlas Cove but smaller in size), the Okrika Jetty in the Onne Channels. It was from this facility that almost all the products pumped by the Port Harcourt Refinery through the PPMC eastern trunk line came from rather than from the refinery processes.
Though it is true that criminals tapping into pipelines carrying imported fuels contributed to the current fuel crisis in Nigeria , it is rather a defeatist escape route for the federal government to solely blame the activities of vandals for the crippled fuel supply situation across the country. Whose responsibility is it to check the activities of such criminals? Government and its machineries. In the case of Warri and Kaduna feedstock lines, the government blamed militants. Now in the case of tampering of PPMC products lines, government blames criminals (vandals). Haba government what are you there for?
The nation has or was supposed to have about 445, 000 barrels per stream day installed domestic refining capacity, but today we cannot process a single barrel in one year under a government that is spending huge money on very expensive foreign media to showcase the fruits of its reform agenda. Shame!
The youngest of the existing three refineries (Port Harcourt II) was built over 20 years ago and the current state of the three plants could be rightly described as junk yards which at best performance outing would just crack crude oil to produce PMS and DPK. Agreed that government has no business in business even though government people had secretly bought over the entire national assets under the ongoing opaque transparent privatization policy, it remains baffling that none of the investors given license to operate private refineries has been encouraged to start work on the proposed sites of such projects.
Truth be told, there seems to be a league of highly favoured political sycophants who are covertly working to ensure none of the nation’s refineries work or new ones established.
These miscreants who are eating fat into the flesh of the already battered Nigerians are the major problem the nation has to frontally deal with. In addition, the problems of fuel supply are compounded by corrupt government and NNPC officials who benefit from commissions on multi-billion dollar fuel imports.
The Nigerian people should ask their government to publish the list of Government/NNPC contractors who are involved in the importation of refined petroleum products into the country. From all indications, there is no place both in NNPC and DPR were a comprehensive list exists.
Maybe, the Presidency may have something that look like a manifest of contractors that brings fuel products into the country.
Publication of such manifest would clearly show Nigerians that majority of those who bring in refined products into the country either are part owners of refineries across the world including some of our neighbouring West African countries.
Those who are not owners of refineries are fully accredited refiners’ agents and majority of them are either directly in government or closely related to the Presidency.
How can domestic refineries come back to life when its production would threaten the lucrative business of some privileged few? God help all of us. Amen.
IFEANYI IZEZE, Pepple Close, Finima Bonny Island, Rivers State.