The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation thinks that it no longer makes sense for keep nation’s refineries in operation.
The Group Managing Director of the corporation, Mele Kyari, told lawmakers in Abuja on Thursday that NNPC deliberately shut down the refineries because they no longer made sense to be operated.
Kyari, who appeared before the House of Representatives Committee on Petroleum Upstream at the National Assembly Complex, said that the NNPC was unable to supply crude oil to the refineries.
According to him, it was only Escravos pipeline which the NNPC managed to sustain through contracting process.
The GMD noted that was practically impossible to run pipeline at their optimum capacity.
“For instance, to run Kaduna and Warri refinery, you need to deliver 170,000 barrel of oil per day so that both will operate at 70 per cent capacity,” he said.
The corporation, he said, has over 5,000 kilometers of pipelines with 13 fuel depots.
He said that the task is to protect these facilities to forestall the activities of vandals.
“And I can tell you today that except the Atlas Cove to Ibadan line and also the Port Harcourt to Aba line, none of these pipeline is serviced”, he said.
“We cannot flow product into these lines, the cheap one is to say they are aged but the real reason is that the level of activities of vandals on these lines is gross, monumental and profound.
“At every point within a month we fix 80 vandal points. The option is to shut them down and the result of having one depot is what we have seen in Lagos. ”
The NNPC boss further told the lawmakers that to protect the pipelines, the NNPC had to engaged the service of security agencies to curtail the activities of vandals.
He called for expedited action on the passage the the Petroleum Industry Bill by the National Assembly to spur more investors’ interest in the sector.
“Initially most of the problems are usually from the NNPC because no one wants his power taken away from him, but I salute the GMD of NNPC,” he said
