The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited, has raised an alarm that over 200 illegal refineries are operating across the country, with no government-owned refinery working at the moment.

Group Managing Director (GMD) of NNPC, Mele Kyari raised this alarm when he appeared before the House of Representatives Joint Committee on Petroleum Resources (Downstream), investigating the increase in prices of diesel and cooking gas.

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Kyari acknowledged that the situation was quite unfortunate in his address to the committee chaired by Hon. Abdullahi Gaya, while pointing out that NNPC was doing something to make sure the refineries work again.

While noting that a good number of illegal refineries had been destroyed, he said the NNPC was in the process of doing a quick fix on the Warri refinery.

On petroleum supply, the GMD stated that no one could guarantee the security of petroleum supply, as countries are preserving excess volume that they have in their kitty.

Solutions to the current energy crisis, high prices of petroleum products Kyari attributed the current energy crisis to the Ukraine and Russia war which resulted in the increase in petroleum products.

He said the solution to the current energy challenges includes restoration of crude oil production, provision of more foreign exchange by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to oil marketers with massive intervention currently ongoing to see if the issue would be resolved by the end of July and deliver more supply of petroleum products.

The NNPC boss explained, “Community members are not the thieves, absolutely not. Everything we are doing is to incorporate the communities into the process of protecting these assets.

“The National Assembly in its wisdom also included Trust Fund for the communities in the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) so that they become parts and parcel of the system. Criminals in the Niger Delta come from all parts of the country. At these illegal refineries, there are people from all works of life there.

“Many of these people are completely armed and the community members cannot even report them, they are helpless because if they report them, they will come after them.

“My suggestion this moment is delivered supply, make sure oil marketers are also able to import, and there’s need to engage the CBN to create more dollars, once we do these, dollars will be allocated for the import of AGO, the will also dampen the effects of going to buy the dollar in the open market.

“So, you can have a cheaper dollar and definitely it will affect the price. Secondly, the regulatory institutions, the authority, Consumer Protection Council and NNPC, I suggest we need to sit jointly to see how arbitrage can be managed so that the end-user is not completely exploited.”

Speaking further, Kyari ruled out the possibility of returning to the regime of subsidising diesel and LPG.

He said, “Today countries are toying with subsidy because prices are so high because they don’t think they can manage inflation associated with it.’’

Source: https://matrixliveng.com/nnpc-raises-alarm-over-operations-of-200-illegal-refineries-in-nigeria/

we can have such amount of illegal refineries but we can't have just one very functional refinery in Nigeria...it's funny though...let our leaders continue to DECEIVE themselves

If you fo your job they'll fade our naturally

Since you can't operate let them help you

Get the government refinery working and stop the complaints

Shameless nation! People are helping you do a job you have refused to do and you are complaining?

In my eyes NNPC is an illegal organisation that has out lived it's usefulness. Those 200 refiners presently has more cred and better value than the useless corruption subsidy management outfit
To me everybody earning salary @ NNPC should be behind bars for the next 21yrs after refunding every penny unjustly earned to the last Kobo.
We can't just continue like this. The next government must scrap them and give us a new thing.
Fvck whoever loves Nigeria's present moribund state.

Is it not very shameful? What you can not do, ordinary Nigerians are doing it even in an unfavorable conditions.
You should encourage them instead by giving them license

If you cannot refine, empower the local refineries rather than crimialize them. At least if they can refine well it will stop us from paying large amount of money on refining crude putside the country

Very very useless people...you deliberately killed the government refineries and shouting that others are refining...what kind of country is this sef?

Encourage these small small local refineries and see how dependent on foreign refined product would drop to zero....!!

I almost forgot they are shouting cos their pocket is been treathened...!!!