Peterside Calls Nigeria’s Award Of Repairs Contract For It’s 200,000 BPD Refinery For $1.5 billion, ‘Brazen Adventure’
The Oasis Reporters
March 31, 2021
At a time that Shell is selling its 157,000 bpd refinery located 30 miles (48 kilometers) northeast of San Francisco for $1.2 billion over it’s loss making status, Nigeria is pumping $1.5 billion into the repairs of its unmitigated and perennially loss making refinery.
StanbicIBTC chairman, Mr Atedo Peterside has joined many Nigerians in calling on the FG to privatise the refineries and avoid years of losses from them.
And Peterside should know, as a banker who in his twenties had become an Assistant General Manager at then NAL Merchant Bank, a Federal Government owned bank that was in partnership with NNDC (Northern Nigeria Development Corporation) where he made waves brokering investment deals before quitting to launch Investment Bank and Trust Company, IBTC in the 80s.
Atedo Peterside, the Chairman, Stanbic IBTC Bank Plc has urged the FG to sell the Port Harcourt refinery to core investors as a $1.5 billion rehabilitation budget should be subject to an informed national debate.
Mr. Peterside disclosed this in a social media statement on Sunday morning.
In 2019, PH Refinery contributed zero revenue, but incurred costs of N47bn; almost N4bn a month! Instead of ending this nightmare through a #BPE core investor sale, #NNPC wants to enmesh Nigeria into a deeper financial mess by throwing $1.5bn (incl. debt) at a problem it created?
— Atedo Peterside (@AtedoPeterside) March 28, 2021
He said, “FG should halt $1.5bn approval for repair of Port Harcourt refinery and subject this brazen & expensive adventure to an informed national debate.
“Many experts prefer that this refinery is sold ‘as is’ by BPE to core-investors with proven capacity to repair it with their own funds,” he said.
Several Nigerians have at different times called on the FG to privatise the refineries and avoid years of losses from them, but the management of the NNPC has continued to insist it will rehabilitate them and continue to own them.
A report published by NNPC in 2020 has shown that Nigeria’s three refineries still cost the country N10.23 billion in expenses.
The NNPC disclosed in the report that the three refineries, located in Warri, Port-Harcourt and Kaduna, processed no crude because of the rehabilitation works being carried out on them.
The Port-Harcourt Refining and Petrochemical Company Limited (PHRC) has the capacity of producing 210,000 barrels per day, Kaduna Refining and Petrochemical Company Limited (KRPC) can produce 110,000 barrels per day while the Warri Refining Petrochemical Company Limited (WRPC) has a 125, 000 barrels per day production capacity.
Additional reporting: Nairametrics.
