NNPC Says All Refineries Will Resume Production By End of April

 Chief Operations Officer, in charge of Downstream at the NNPC, Henry Ikem-Obih, has said that all the nation’s refineries would resume production and begin to contribute positively to improving the fuel scarcity currently facing the country before the end of April.

According to Vanguard, he said this during a tour of petrol stations in Abuja, where he expressed optimism that part of the fuel purchased by Nigerians from petrol stations would be produced locally from refineries because they were all at various stages of start-up.

“Most of the work that is being done at the refineries is on site, just getting them to start up and start cracking, so that they too should start contributing to the amount of fuel we have to distribute across Nigeria,” he affirmed. “It is our goal to ensure that within the month of April, we will have some local refining contributing to the amount of fuel we have to distribute across the country.”

 

Identifying paucity of foreign exchange (forex) as one of the major reasons for the scarcity witnessed across the country, he disclosed that a number of international oil companies, IOCs, in the upstream oil and gas sector have agreed to provide foreign exchange for oil marketing companies for the importation of petrol, which would significantly improve the fuel situation in the country.