The House of Representatives is spoiling for a war with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) over another cycle Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) of the country’s refineries.
The national oil corporation is proposing to spend some $2.00 billion, about N740 billion on the refineries.
The House of Representatives does not appear to be in the mood to sail along with the NNPC on what it considered to be outrageous.
Management of the NNPC is having a herculean task of convincing the legislators why the huge sum should be approved by them for yet another TAM on Port Harcourt (Rivers State), Warri (Delta State) and Kaduna (Kaduna State) refineries.
The House has asked the NNPC to justify the viability of further spending on the country’s four refineries and the daily allocation of 445,000 barrels of crude to the facilities.
The House has however, noted that the same refineries had already swallowed “more than $20 billion” on TAM over the years but without appreciable improvement in their performances to justify further expenditure.
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The refineries are being labelled as having the “worst performance record in Africa” at 11 per cent capacity utilisation, compared to the 81 per cent by Egypt and the 85 per cent in South Africa.
A federal legislator from Ogun State, Mr. Ibrahim Isiaka, says the performance of the refineries is abysmal.
“The House is cognizant that whopping sums of $308 million; $57 million; $200 million; and lately, more than N264 billion were spent on the refineries, yet it was reported that the NNPC is seeking $1.8 billion to carry out another TAM to make the refineries attractive to investors,” Isiaka noted in Tuesday’s plenary of the House.
Already, the House on Tuesday directed NNPC to suspend any plan on carrying out TAM until they (the lawmakers) determine the current health status of the four refineries by investigating the TAM carried out so far on them.
