In what seems as the boldest move yet to address the perennial issue of fuel scarcity, the Federal Government is considering a policy that would compel multinational oil and gas firms operating in the company to build refineries in Nigeria.
This was disclosed yesterday by the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Mr. Ibe Kachikwu while speaking at the ongoing Nigerian International Petroleum Summit (NIPS).
The Minister said by the time multinational oil firms would no longer be allowed to ship out all the crude oil they produced in Nigeria, noting that emphasis would shift to local production of a substantial portion of crude oil produced in the country.
“We would get to a point where Nigeria, definitely, would be a major supplier of refined petroleum products. It just have to happen. Nothing else makes sense. “We are also saying directly to oil companies that a time would also come when we would not be open to see them move around all the crude oil they produce in Nigeria.
“We will like to see integrated refining and integrated processing here. It gives us more jobs and creates more investments.”
The Minister went further to say that the oil industry must Nigerians the requisite technology skills to operate in the sector.
“The reality is that today, if you cannot produce cheap cost oil, if you cannot diversify the processing of your oil; if you cannot look to internalising and externalising investment in the sector; if you cannot capture the requisite technological skills that are essential to help you operate efficiently, you are lost before you start.
“My target is that over the next 10 years, Nigeria would produce an FPSO and that is not too much to ask. My target over the next 10 years is that Nigeria would become self-sufficient in its power provision. And over the same period, Nigeria would gravitate from crude oil, as it were, to very refined, clean provision of fossils. “My target is that over that same period, investment in the sector, in the sense that Nigerian companies, Nigerian entities and Nigerian shareholders, would begin to move from the minuscule 10 per cent today, to between 40 and 50 per cent of local investments.
“What have we achieved since the launch of the Seven Big Wins two years ago? We have been able to, through a lot of struggle, change the funding capacity for the upstream, and that had sort of energized investors in the upstream sector.
President Muhammadu Buhari who was represented by the Secretary to Government of the Federation, Mr. Boss Mustapha, said Nigeria is open to investors in the downstream sector
