Details of the President Muhammadu Buhari’s New Vision for oil-producing communities in the Niger Delta, is emerging as an idea is now being worked out to explore how some of the local refiners and the local communities in the region can become shareholders in the proposed Modular refineries concept of the Federal Government, presidency sources have disclosed.
The consideration going on now is subsequent to the promises made by the Federal Government during the presidential interactive engagements in several oil-producing States led by the Vice President Yemi Osinbajo to integrate the local refiners, rather than a scorched-earth policy that seeks to eliminate the operations of such refiners.
But sources said there are a number of significant hurdles to be crossed especially issues around the engineering and technical ramifications of such a conversion, besides figuring out the financial models that would be workable and profitable.
However, specific consideration on how to integrate local refiners in the oil-producing communities into the Federal Government’s proposed modular refinery concept is now in progress with the Presidency and the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Agency, NSIA, spear-heading efforts.
At a meeting late last week at the Presidential Villa, issues around technical and engineering implications of how to integrate the refiners were discussed with industry experts and practitioners making presentations on how to implement the Buhari presidency modular refinery initiative said to have been first proposed by Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources.
At the meeting the experts reported that they have worked closely with the NNPC, Oil & Gas operators, owners of marginal fields, operators of refineries and various technical services providers “to develop a workable system to develop this initiative,” a presidency source disclosed.
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