Though the body of language of the federal government indicates that the days of fuel subsidy are over, feelers from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, (NNPC) Sunday suggests the country will still rely on 75 per cent importation of fuel throughout the whole of next year.
This was made known to newsmen by the Group Managing Director NNPC and Minister of State for Petroleum, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, during his tour of Kaduna Refinery and Petrochemical Company (KRPC).
Kachikwu said, “the future is that, Nigeria is still going to import fuel in 2016 and beyond. Best case situation is 25 per cent local and 75 per cent importation. Worse case is what we are experiencing now.
“Until we begin to get individuals who can co-relocate, we are going to be doing a mixture of local and importation of fuel to meet up demands. In the next few weeks, however, queues will disappear in fuel stations.”
The minister said that the Kaduna refinery in no time will be producing more than two million litres per day capacity as soon as an Fluid Catalytic Cracking, FCC, unit is fully on stream.
He said: “We need to get it back to re-kit it to work well. We will do that with some level of production going on. Our concern is to have a consistent production and provision of products at all times.”
He debunked speculations on fuel price saying: “We will not be fluctuating prices, we will take an average. Today no subsidy, in January we will look at the situation and announce it.”
Hinting on privatization, Kachikwu said: “President Muhammadu Buhari has not approved any policy about selling the refineries.”
-Emmanuel Ikechukwu
