The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPCL, has stopped importing refined petroleum products and is now off-taking fuel from the Dangote Petroleum Refinery and other local refineries.
NNPC’s Group Chief Executive Officer, Mele Kyari, disclosed this on Monday at the ongoing conference of the Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationists, which was held in Lagos and themed ‘Resolving the Nigerian Energy Trilemma: Energy Security, Sustainable Growth and Affordability’.
This is coming at a time when some petroleum marketers insisted that they would import petroleum products and sell at a price lesser than that of the $20bn dollar refinery.
At the Conference, Kyari disclosed that the NNPC, as of today, is not importing any fuel as it now buys from local refineries.
“Today, NNPC does not import any product, we are taking only from domestic refineries,” he revealed.
Recall that the NNPC was the sole off-taker of Dangote PMS until the Federal Government permitted other marketers to approach the refinery for direct lifting.
Kyari debunked the allegations that the NNPC was sabotaging the Dangote refinery.
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Speaking on domestic refining, he said there were several media stunts around saying the NNPC was now a saboteur of domestic refining by not willing to support domestic refineries.
“The point is very far from it and I’m going to speak to it straight. We are very proud part-owners of Dangote refinery, no doubt about it. We saw an opportunity that there is a clear market for at least 300,000 barrels of our production; we know that as time moves on, people will start struggling to find markets for their production.
“It will happen, It’s already happening. Oil is found, as you know, in many unexpected locations across the world and people have choices. Therefore we saw an opportunity to log supply to the domestic refinery, not just Dangote but any other refinery that operates in the country, so it was a very informed business decision.
“Therefore, from day one, we knew that it is to our benefit to supply crude oil to the domestic refinery, so we don’t need to be persuaded; we don’t need anyone to talk to us, there is no need for any pressure from the streets for us to do this. We are already doing this,“ he clarified.
On the request that Nigeria needs to domesticate its oil, he posited that Nigerian crude is ’Lamborghini crude ‘, so the products would be pricey.
Kyari said the issue of high-quality fuel should be a relative thing, saying many refineries do not patronise Nigerian crude because of the price.
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