A member of the House of Representatives, Mr Ehiozuwa Agbonayinma, has said that rather than destroy illegal refineries in the Niger Delta region, the Federal Government should license and regulate them.

Speaking, yesterday, in Abuja, he said that the government should leverage on the skills of the operators of the refineries to develop small outlets for refining crude oil for domestic use.

Agbonayinma, who represents Egor/ Ikpoba-Okha Constituency of Edo State, said that his advice to government became necessary against at the backdrop of failure of persons given licenses to build refineries by previous administrations, to do so.

He also said that it was because of the inability of the government to fix existing refineries but had resorted to sustained importation of petroleum products.

He said that the number of illegal refineries being destroyed and the rate at which they resurfaced was evidence that the operators had some engineering skills that government should harness.

According to him, rather than destroy the so-called illegal refineries, government, through the Ministry of Niger Delta, Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC and Amnesty Programme should bring together the youths engaging in the illegal refinery and harness their technology.

“The activities of illegal refineries operators should be regulated, licenses should be issued to them and crude oil allocated to them based on their capacities. In civilised countries, what to do is to bring all those youths and look for a way to harness their brains rather than to destroy the refineries.

“They are doing what government cannot do by consistently refining crude oil into petroleum products; they deserved to be assembled and encouraged to do it better, under regulation.”