Nigeria To Import 75% Of Petrol Needs In 2016 – Kachikwu

Ibe KachikwuThe Minister of State for Petroleum, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, on Sunday, said fuel importation will continue beyond 2016.

Addressing a press conference shortly after he carried out an inspection of the revamped Kaduna Refining and Petrochemicals Company, the Minister said “the future is that, Nigeria is still going to import fuel in 2016 and beyond”.

According to Mr. Kachikwu, until Nigeria begins to get individuals who can co-relocate, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, will be doing what he termed “a mixture of local and importation of fuel to meet up demands”.

He put the percentage of local petroleum production to importation at 25 per cent to 75 per cent respectively, which he said was best case scenario.

“Worse case is what we are experiencing now”, he added.

The Minister also assured that in the next couple of weeks, queues at filling stations will disappear.

In a related development, Kachikwu said the Kaduna Refinery will soon attain 2 million litres per day capacity as soon as an FCC unit is fully on stream.

“We need to get it back to re-kit it to work well. We will do that with some level of production going on”, said Mr. Kachikwu.

“Our concern is to have a consistent production and provision of products at all times”.

On subsidy and pricing, he said “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”.

On privatization, he said “President Muhammadu Buhari has not approved any policy about selling the refineries”.