Oil and gas merchant, Safiriyu tasks FG on building new refineries
Bankole Taiwo, Abeokuta
The Chief Executive Officer of SAF Petroleum, Aare Safiriyu Adebanjo Kazeem has appealed to the federal government to deploy resources towards building new refineries for the country maintaining that Nigerians will keep on paying more for the fuel consumed because of the additional cost of importation.
Aare Safiriyu Kazeem said that building of new refineries would not only help to create thousands of jobs but also in the long run help to cut down what Nigerians are paying for fuel since it is now produced locally.
The oil and gas merchant in a chat with our Correspondent said that rather than wasting fund on repairing the country’s old refineries which has yielded little or nothing, the federal government should concentrate efforts on constructing new refineries that would not only help in providing employment but also guarantee steady supply of petroleum products and ease the suffering of all Nigerians.
He said “time is now for the federal government to build new refineries so that we can stop importation of what ordinarily we have in abundance here. It’s against all logic that we are still importing fuel, does that mean we don’t have the wherewithal to build at least two new refineries under two years?
“With, new refineries, we will be solving the major problem of frequent increment in pump price, ensure steady supply of fuel as well as provision of jobs for our teeming youths. The issue of controversial oil subsidy which usually pitch the government against the people will also become history. The implication of this is that the country will have more fund to attend to its developmental needs among others”.
Aare Kazeem explained that one other major constraint confronting the business of oil and gas in the country is the problem of infrastructural deficit and largely, the challenges of bad roads which are more often than not responsible for tankers’ accident appealing to both federal and state government to help in addressing this problem.
