At the backdrop of the announcement of the Federal Government’s plans to rehabilitate the country’s refineries by the Minister of State, Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, experts in the petroleum downstream industry have said that the government lacks credibility to restructure the sector and bring the refineries to full operation. The country has four refineries with 524,000 barrels per day capacity. However, the refineries, in the last 20 years, have had a poor operating record with average capacity utilization hovering between 15 and 25 percent per annum. As a result, 70-80 percent of the national petroleum products demand is met through imports. But operators in the petroleum industry have insisted that the Federal Government cannot make the country’s refineries efficient. Speaking to Vanguard at the sideline of Nigeria International Petroleum Summit (NIPS) in Abuja, Chairman of Integrated Oil and Gas company, Captain Emmanuel Iheanacho, said, “The downstream sector has not […]