Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Ibe Kachikwu, yesterday which speaking to state house correspondents in Abuja said that the Federal government may sell the three refineries located in Kaduna, Warri and Port Harcourt after they have been fixed and dimmed operationally efficient.
He said; “The feeling of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) and the President is that we should first get the refineries to be efficient before we talk about privatisation, otherwise we will be selling scraps. In their present state nobody is going to offer you serious money. A huge amount of investment is going into this.”
“Apart from this, there were other issues that could determine the final decision of the government on the refineries; the labour issues, for example, are some of the issues that must be addressed if such proposal would sail through.”
“We have thought out other possible means of getting the refineries back to full productivity adding that the government would be shopping for investors who are willing to invest money and competence in the refineries”
“We have got to take the realities on ground. The decision therefore was to find investors who are willing, almost on a loan structure basis to put money, put the technical skills, work with our people who are there and we have very many skilled people, but let us face it, the fact that they are working today is because they are local people, they are local engineers who are able to resuscitate them. There is a capacity efficiency that we are not just tapping into now,”.
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