Mkpoikana Udoma
Port Harcourt –– As part of efforts in addressing the challenges of fuel importation and its attendant impact on the country’s economy, the Federal Government has affirmed its commitment to boost local refining of crude oil in the country.
The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Oil), Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, made the commitment during a courtesy visit by members of the Crude Oil Refineries Owners Association of Nigeria, CORAN, led by its Chairman, Momoh Oyarekhua.
Lokpobiri assured the association that the Federal Government would continue to partner with them in finding home-grown solutions to the various problems bedeviling crude oil refining in the yhe country.
He said, “As a government, we would continue to partner with you to find home-grown solutions to the problems. We will try whatever we can to see how we can provide a better environment for you to thrive. We will be partners in this journey, we want this sector to move forward.”
He further promised that government will continue to engage with them as partners considering that the sector was critical to the economic survival of the country, adding that, once the sector was taken care of, the country would have solved the perennial problem of importation of petroleum products.
On the issue of access to funds, the Minister advised the association to explore and leverage on other alternative sources of funding like the Bank of Industry and the African Export-Import Bank among others.
Earlier, the Chairman, Crude Oil Refineries Owners Association of Nigeria, Mr. Momoh Oyarekhua, lamented that about 40 percent of Nigeria’s foreign exchange earnings were channelled into the importation of refined petroleum products.
According to him, if there could be self-sufficiency in oil refining in Nigeria, there would be no reason to import refined products; noting that the association was established to upscale local refining of crude oil in Nigeria and to place the country on the path of sustainable local production of refined products.
Oyarekhua enumerated various challenges militating against the operations of CORAN to include inadequate supply of feed-stock of crude from the local producers into the refineries, multiple taxation, lack of access to funding, among others.
He said they have engaged NNPC Ltd. on the development who had agreed on selling crude to them, however, the engagement has not yielded the desired results; and appealed to the government to support them in expanding their capacity to produce PMS locally through a refinery intervention fund.
This article was originally posted at sweetcrudereports.com
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