Nigeria’s Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Ibe Kachikwu, has bemoaned the country’s inability to refine its own crude oil despite four decades of operations in the downstream sector.
Kachikwu made this statement before the senate committee on petroleum on Thursday, noting that the ministry he presides over and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) were working actively to provide lasting solutions to the current fuel crisis in the country.
Kachikwu, however, noted that Nigeria’s refineries need to be functional in order for fuel crises to be resolved totally.
“In what I might call an emergency before the work that we are doing on the refineries that would be finished sometime in 2019,” Kachikwu said.
“I want to remind that over two years we haven’t had queues. We are spending night and day to find solutions to nip this in the bud.
“Ultimately what this country needs is to have its refineries working and I have said that it is shameful that after 30, 40 years of activities in the downstream, cannot produce sufficient [petroleum products]. I have said nobody sells crude in its form in the world and we have to have the technical capacity to do this.”
The minister also listed non-payment to marketers as one of the reasons for the scarcity. Kachikwu expressed regrets that some people took advantage of the situation.