AGIP, Oando: FG denies concession of Port-Harcourt Refinery

 The reported concession of the Port Harcourt refinery is still cloaked in confusion as the Minister of Petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu denied that the Federal Government has sold the facility to AGIP/ENI and Oando.

Kachikwu made the denial on Thursday at a public hearing by the Senate ad-hoc committee on Planned Concession of the Port Harcourt Refinery to AGIP/ENI and Oando.

 According to him; “The Memorandum of Understanding with AGIP/ENI and Oando on repairs of refineries may have been misrepresented in the media to mean outright sale. “The process of concessioning is not easy and cannot be done without the consent of the three arms of government. The ministry is only interested in the rehabilitation of the nation’s ailing refineries. “The Government will not sell Nigeria’s oil refineries to private firms contrary to public speculations.

 A technical committee has been set up by the government to undertake a review.” Addressing the swap method of payment which was reportedly applied in the said deal, Kachikwu said; “I have no agreement with any company that crude should ‎be exchanged as form of payment.

It is cost effective to build a new refinery than repairing the old refinery due to inability to get the spare part for the existed one. “My tenure has initiated a deal of selling and buying method of the products instead of the earlier method of swapping crude as a means of payment for the supply of the refined products.”

 Recall that the Senate had set up a seven-man ad-hoc committee to probe the $15 billion concession contract with a mandate to probe and reveal how and why such a deal was sealed and the criteria used to select Agip/ENI and Oando Plc as the beneficiaries. Chairman of the Committee, Sen. Abubakar Kyari (APC, Borno), demanded the real cost of the concession to the nation as well as the real time frame of the concession.

 Meanwhile, Chairman of Oando, Wale Tinubu, in his contribution also denied that his company intended to buy Port Harcourt refinery as reported in the media describing the importation of fuel as an “embarassment”. He said: “Reported concessioning should be disregarded while efforts should be made to upgrade dilapidated refineries in Nigeria.