The Group Managing Director of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mr Mele Kyari has once again assured Nigerians that the Corporation has the best hands to revive the moribund national refineries, but failed to either give details of renewal plans or time of delivery.
Speaking before the House of Representatives Committee on Petroleum (Upstream) in Abuja, he said “The oil industry is a technology-based industry and this technology evolves every day. I can say that in the entire global oil and gas industry, there is nowhere you would have gone that you would not find a skilled Nigerian working in the oil and gas industry. And indeed, we are probably the largest contributor to skilled manpower in the industry of all the black nations of the world.”
According to him, “The refineries didn’t fail because there were no skills. They failed because we are unable to take care of the refineries. And we don’t have to give excuses why we didn’t take care of them. But what we have decided to do is to make them work. There is no scarcity of skilled people.
Kyari averred that “The will is there today and our plan is to get them to work. And I assure you that the plans we have in place will deliver these refineries. There is no issue around absence of skills; we have the best refiners in the world. Anywhere you go in the world, they will attest to it that we have the best refiners who are Africans in this country.”
However, he added that “We are taking steps to realise this before the end of 2023, which is possible. A number of interventions are ongoing currently, including our elaborate intrusion into the frontier basins.”
Kyari did not give further details on the steps and the particular stage of the refineries repair plan of the NNPC.
