Fresh move
to unveil a new gas master plan to drive Nigeria’s industrial growth is
underway, the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, has
said.
The
minister, who disclosed this in Abuja yesterday while speaking at the fifth
triennial national delegates’ conference of the Petroleum and Natural Gas
Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN), said that the Federal
Executive Council (FEC) approved the masterplan after its meeting yesterday
following his presentation.
His words:
“I am just coming back from the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting where I
made a presentation on gas policy and the document was approved today. We need
major changes in policy to make gas a hub of our economy. We must have a stream
of earning between petroleum and gas in order to see an improvement in our
economy or see the opportunities we are supposed to reap from the oil and gas sector.
So, a lot need to happen in the midstream and upstream.
“Gas
development remains the new horizon for opportunity. There is so much happening
that needs to happen that should have happened yesterday and not begin to
happen now in the gas sector. Gas is the future of this country in terms of
infrastructure, support, members of staff training and re-training.”
The minister
declared that the oil and gas is changing transformatively with the tumbling of
prices below $46 despite the intervention of the Organisation of Oil Exporting
Countries (OPEC).
He stressed
that Nigerians must work inclusively to deal with the difficulties that are
happening in the industry whether militancy, slow speed of approvals and
policies that must now move as fast as they should.
According to Guardian, Besides,
Kachikwu said no attempt had been made to sell the nation’s refineries.He said:
“On the refineries, there has been no attempt, no approval to concession
refineries or sell. What we have approval for is to bring financing mechanisms
that enable us to find the resource to upgrade the refineries.”
In their
present epileptic nature, they would probably be obsolete in the next three to
four years. The reality is that once the private sector players begin to build
their own refineries, whatever we think we are concessioning, will disappear.
Unless we move very quickly to reposition those refineries in such a way that
they can compete, we would lose the refineries completely.”
He said the
financing mechanisms for the refineries would pass through the Board of the
Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) in a competitive and transparent
manner, adding that all the processes would be done with the management of the
refineries and NNPC in place.
In another
development, the President of PENGASSAN, Olabode Johnson, who lauded the
passage of the Petroleum Industry Governance Bill (PIGB) by the Senate, urged
the National Assembly to ensure that the remaining parts of the original PIB
are passed to make Nigeria enjoy optimal benefit from its hydrocarbon
resources.
The union
said though it supports the initiative of the Federal Government to bring
investors to revamp the refineries, it must open its books up to be accessed by
all the stakeholders before decisions are made.
He added:
“We seek that PENGASSAN and NUPENG should be carried along at all stages of the
process to ensure that labour-related issues and job security is guaranteed.
While we await the direction of the investors in the three refineries, we call
on government to ensure immediate rehabilitation of obsolete equipment in the
plants.”
0 Comments