The Senate on Thursday mandated its Committee on Petroleum Downstream, Upstream, and Gas to probe the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) over the $396m spent on Turn-Around Maintenance of the nation’s refineries between 2013 and 2015.
The committee is to investigate expenditures, ascertain the current state of the refineries and arrange a stakeholder conference aimed at finding ways to revamp them.
This followed a motion by Senator Yusuf A. Yusuf (APC, Taraba Central), who noted that whereas the refineries in Port-Harcourt (PHRC), Kaduna (KRPC) and Warri (WRPC) were established to meet the nation’s needs for petroleum products, the country has spent billions of US$ in TAM without meaningful results over the past 25 years.
A statement by Ezrel Tabiowo Special Assistant (Press) to President of the Senate, quoted Senator Yusuf as lamenting that “the refineries have remained in moribund state in the last 15-20 years and is almost reaching total collapse due to lack of proposer maintenance of the facilities with a poor average capacity utilization hovering between fifteen percent and twenty-five percent per annum.”
Despite these huge spending on the refineries, he said the “NNPC recently announced a cumulative loss of N123.25bn in 10 months (January to October 2019), putting the total revenue of facilities at N68.82bn, while total expenses incurred was N192.1bn within the same period.”
He warned that “such huge wastage and slippages amidst the nation’s tight economy, if not addressed, may lead the country back to recession.”
The lawmaker added that such losses, when averted and combined with the huge expenditures in “under-recovery” on fuel pump price and properly channeled into full rehabilitation and construction of modern refineries, would positively impact on the economy and save the country from the embarrassment of importation of petroleum products and its ripple effect.