PRESIDENT Goodluck Jonathan, on Tuesday, met with the operational and technical executives of the nation's existing four refineries, to deliberate on how best to achieve their planned resuscitation and bring them to full production capacities.

The Minister of Petroleum, Mrs Deziani Allison-Maduekwe, who led the industry operators to the meeting, told State House correspondents that it followed the retreat organised for the executives, where solutions were proffered for the ailing refineries.

She said the essence of the meeting was to brief the president on the outcome of the retreat, concerning the challenges facing the refineries and possible solutions to the problems in the short and medium terms.

Allison-Maduekwe remarked that the president was also briefed on the greenfield refines, turn around maintenance and governance structure and a general overview of what came out from the retreat.

She spoke of the major challenges facing the refineries, including loss of crude “through incessant and very high volume being lost to vandalisation, infrastructural problems,” noting that some of the refineries were with outdated equipment and instrumentation.

She added that government would not consider attaching the building of refineries as a condition for granting future oil prospecting licenses, saying that such measure was not a commercially viable option.



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