The Management of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) ltd has continued to play a blame game for failing to bring Nigerian refineries into life after gulping billions of naira over the years as a turnaround maintenance fees. Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Mele Kyari claimed that poor execution of the work and the near collapses of the refinery were responsible for failing to work the refineries. Kyari made these remarks while addressing the House of Reps Ad-hoc Committee on the investigation of why the refineries have continued to gulp billions without refining a liter of crude oil.
The GMD said, “We recognize that today none of our refineries is operating for the very obvious reason that through the work of this committee, you will find out why they are not operating. We will hide nothing from you. We will also tell you where we are as we speak today.
He explained “Needless to say that the refineries were essentially not properly managed over time, not just today but in the last 20 to 25 years. The turnaround maintenance processes were clearly mismanaged over time. I have said this over and over.
The NNPC management added that “We have degradation of monumental proportions that we met and of course, the only way you can do this is to conduct full turnaround maintenance.”
Kyari also claimed that other factors like pipeline vandalism and sabotage of facilities were also part of what has refused the refinery to come back to life over the decade of spending on the refinery with the hope it will work.
Although, Kyari did not tell the committee who are responsible for the sabotage of facilities as he claimed, meanwhile, he informed the committee that the next plan was to concurrently proceed with the work on all the refineries with priority being given to the Port Harcourt refinery then later Kaduna and Warri shall follow.
Earlier, the Chairman of the Adhoc Committee, Ganiyu Abiodun Johnson reminded stakeholders that the terms of reference of the committee set up were to investigate the state of refineries in the country and determine the actual cost of rehabilitation and what is needed to bring them back to maximum refining capacity.
After thorough scrutiny, the committee demanded that the NNPC management provide them with details of the earlier breakdown of turnaround maintenance carried out and to re-appear before the same committee on 3rd June 2022 for further investigation.
