Few years ago, any economic pundit that thought of the possibility of a privately-owned petroleum refinery that would have the capacity to meet the needs of Nigeria’s downstream sector, and still export to neighboring countries, would have been tagged a dreamer; hallucinating in the reveries of fantasies. Even if the prediction came out of the mouth of a known expert, many people would still not had believed him. It would not had been because of pessimism but history of failures of government-run refineries and the inability of the licensed private refineries to hit the ground running, after many years of getting approval. Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) recently slammed its sledge hammer on investors who defaulted on the terms and conditions embedded in the award of licences for refineries. The regulatory watchdog revoked thirty-two licences for failure of those companies to achieve stipulated milestones, pegged with certain […]