By VICTOR AHIUMA-YOUNG
THE Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff of Nigeria, PENGASSAN, advised the Federal Government against outright sale of the nation’s four refineries as being canvassed in some quarters, but to adopt the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas, NLNG, model in the management of the refineries.

In the NLNG model, the Federal Government through the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, owns 49 per cent of the equity share, while the remaining 51 per cent is owned by Shell Gas BV, Total LNG Limited and Eni International in different proportions thus freeing the company from the overbearing control of government.

President of PENGASSAN, Comrade Babatunde Ogun, spoke on the issue, said that it was only the NLNG model that could protect the national interest and make the refineries operate at their full capacities.

According to him, the model would free the operations of the refineries from all encumbrances caused by bureaucracy and official bottlenecks that had hindered them from performing at their optimal capacities, explaining that the major problem bedeviling the four refineries was lack of adequate autonomy for their boards.

He decried the present situation where the Managing Director/Chief Executive of the refineries had an approval limit that could not even replace a nut in the plant talk less of carrying out a Turn-Around Maintenance, TAM, arguing that it was detrimental to the efficient operations of the refineries.

Comrade Ogun noted that the “NLNG model allows for autonomy and gives the management the latitude to decide on the day-to-day running operations of the refineries. This will allow the refineries to produce at optimal capacity and compete with their peers all over the world.

There are many limiting factors that cannot allow our refineries to function at optimal capacities and as a major stakeholder we are also worried about this. We canvass that for the downstream sector to be active and for the anomalies in the functioning of the refineries to be corrected, what we need is liberalization not privatization.

This is what the government did with the telecommunications sector. If the market is liberalized, private investors will be able to come in with their investments and establish their refineries, while the existing refineries can operate side by side.”