By Uthman Salami
The Group Managing Director (GMD) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited, Mele Kyari, has revealed that over 200 illegal refineries are operating across the country, with no government-owned refinery working at the moment regrettably.
The Minister stated this while appearing before the House of Representatives Joint Committee on Petroleum Resources (Downstream), investigating the increase in prices of diesel and cooking gas in Nigeria.
He added that even though the government has been able to destroy chunk of these illegal refineries, it is also not leaving any stone unturned by doing everything within its power to ensure that it gives Nigeria formidable refineries.
While noting that the current energy crisis was Ukraine and Russia war induced, the results have led to the increase of petroleum product.
Restoration of crude oil production, provision of more foreign exchange by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to oil marketers with massive intervention are the most effective ways of ending the scourge.
He assured that efforts were currently ongoing to see if the issue would be resolved by the end of July and deliver more supply of petroleum products.
In his words, “Community members are not the thieves, absolutely not. Everything we are doing is to incorporate the communities into the process of protecting these assets.
“The National Assembly in its wisdom also included Trust Fund for the communities in the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) so that they become parts and parcel of the system. Criminals in the Niger Delta come from all parts of the country.
“At these illegal refineries there are people from all works of life there.
“Many of these people are completely armed and the community members cannot even report them, they are helpless because if they report them, they will come after them.
“My suggestion this moment is deliver supply, make sure oil marketers are also able to import, and there’s need to engage the CBN to create more dollars, once we do these, dollars will be allocated for the import of AGO, this will also dampen the effects of going to buy dollar in the open market.
“So you can have cheaper dollar and definitely it will affect the price.
“Secondly, the regulatory institutions, the authority, Consumer Protection Council and NNPC, I suggest we need to sit jointly to see how arbitrage can be managed so that the end-user is not completely exploited.”