ZUL-HAJJ 1 1430 A.H.
THURSDAY NOVEMBER . 19 2009.
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Kaduna, Warri refineries resume ops Dec --Minister
The minister of state for petroleum, Mr Odein Ajumogobia, yesterday said the Kaduna and Warri Refineries would commence full operation in December.
Ajumogobia, who gave the assurance while fielding questions from State House correspondents in Abuja, said the on-going repairs of oil pipelines would also be completed by December.
`` Kaduna and Warri (Refineries) have been rehabilitated and we are just trying to get crude.
`` The pipelines are still bad and we are told that by the middle of December the work would have been through.
`` Crude will now go to Warri and Kaduna,'' he said.
The minister expressed optimism that the current oil importation of 18 million litres per day would drop by 40 per cent after the completion of repairs on the pipelines.
He further said the nation’s oil production capacity had increased to 2.4 million barrels per day (bpd) following the return of normalcy to the hitherto volatile Niger Delta region.
Ajumogobia said Nigeria presently produces 1.830 million bpd of crude oil and 614,805 of condensate, bringing the total to 2.4 million bpd.
On new refineries, the minister said: `` The government can’t afford it and no private investor would want to invest when he is not sure of getting returns on his investment.
`` That is why we are pushing for deregulation and as soon as we deregulate the market, you will see new refineries and in fact you will see increased capacity.
`` Just like the Liquefied Natural Gas, you will see people who will build small refineries, say for 5,000 barrels to serve their community and so on.
`` There will be others who will build 500,000, one million, five million
capacity refinery.
`` It is only then we can now talk about bringing the price down. We can say okay, we have so much crude oil and we can dedicate it to the refineries as recovery cost,'' he said.
On the return of queues in some filling stations across the country, the minister accused some marketers of frustrating government's efforts at making fuel available to end users.
`` The NNPC has brought the fuel and people are keeping it in their backyard, it means there is no fuel in the stations.
`` We have supplied enough to the market and some people are hoarding it so that they can make extra money.
`` If we should do it (deregulation) now, it means we are halving our revenue and Nigeria is relying 90 per cent on crude oil.
`` For those who say we should just give it free, basically what we are going to do is that we are halving our budget.
`` The budget of N3 trillion will now be N1.5 trillion and the current expenditure is over N1.5 trillion,'' he said.
