Kachikwu
said last week when he hosted a group of online news outlets in Abuja that as
part of its ongoing efforts to sanitise Nigeria’s downstream petroleum sector,
the government was going on to review the status of the refinery licences.
“So, that
is why they did not, a lot of them thought it was nice to have licences but as
soon as you move into the capital market and you do your analysis, you realise
this.” The minister noted that government would henceforth require investors in
refinery to show some levels of commitment to their plans as they submit their
requests, adding that refining licences would no longer be issued
discretionarily.
In March,
the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) which is saddled with the task of
issuing refining licences stated that there are 25 private refinery licences
issued by it, out of which 21 are in the ‘Licence to Establish’ (LTE) category,
while four are in the ‘Approval to Construct’ (ATC) category.
About 25
licences that were given to private operators between 2002 and 2014 to build
refinery complexes in Nigeria will be revewed at again and those that have
remained inactive will be revoked, the Minister of State for Petroleum
Resources, Dr.
“The next
stage of this is that we are going to look at all the licences that have been
given out; some of them were given a window within which to build their
refineries and we are going to revoke the ones that were not used,” said
Kachikwu in response to a question on the status of the licenses.
Meanwhile,
the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association (IPMAN) has reiterated its
support for the decision by government to liberalise the downstream petroleum
sector, saying its regulation of who to import and distribute fuel in the
country was a failure. [BI]
No comments:
Post a Comment