Abuja — The Petroleum Minister, Dr. Rilwanu Lukman, has announced plans by Federal Government to halt the export of crude oil, just as plans are afoot to embark on the refining of all crude produced in the country.

He disclosed this yesterday at an interactive session with the Senate Committee on Petroleum (Downstream Sector) under the chairmanship of Senator Emmanuel Paulker.

The session was convened by the committee to find a solution to the lingering fuel scarcity in the country. The session closed yesterday with an assurance by Lukman that the scarcity would end within the next two weeks.

Lukman also told the committee that government was determined to pursue the proposed policy of full deregulation of petroleum downstream sector.

He stated that poor maintenance culture of the refineries had been the bane of the refineries, pointing out that the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has come out with timelines for accomplishing the turn-around maintenance of the nation's refineries.

According to him, "Our ultimate ambition is to stop exporting crude oil, add value to our crude so that we can export refined products. This is what is done in other countries."

He told the committee that although the refineries in the country were old, but they were not beyond repairs as, according to him, older refineries in other parts of the world are performing at optimum capacity due to good maintenance.

Lukman expressed concern that private investors who got approval to establish refineries have not done so, pointing out that the level of profit on investment and partial deregulation were discouraging them

According to him, "We have given licences to people to build refineries but they are useless licences as long as subsidies stays nobody is going to bring in money from outside.

"Our refineries have not performed well; they have not performed well and they cannot be allowed to continue to perform the way they are doing.


"They can perform better and more importantly we will encourage people to set up more refineries; two or three more refineries are now being considered partly by private and partly by joint ventures with NNPC.

"Our thought is that when the current refineries are put into an acceptable level of performance, they will be partially privatized so that they can perform largely better more than when they are fully owned by government."

Stakeholders present at the session all supported the policy of full deregulation.

Secretary General of Independent Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN), Alhaji Aminu Abdulkadir, told the forum that what Nigeria needed was functional refineries.

Another promise on paper, let us see action.
The federal govt can invest into fixing what they have as well and not just sit down and wait for pple to build refineries, govt can build as well.
Enuf promises, let them act and stop going slow.