Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Petroleum (Downstream), Mr. Dakuku Peterside, has called on investors in the refining sub-sector to invest in Nigeria by taking advantage of the opportunities in the sector.
Peterside said this at the Nigeria Refining Capacity Summit, which ended in Uyo, the Akwa Ibom state capital.
Nigeria, he noted, had the best market potential for petroleum products in the entire continent of Africa.
He added that the two-day summit was particularly rewarding as it went a long way to facilitate information sharing on the nation’s oil and gas sector as well as its market potential and the challenges facing the country in the area of petroleum products demand.
“I can assure you that this summit provided us opportunity to ask and answer some very critical national questions that have militated against the attainment of self sufficiency in petroleum products refining in our country”, he said.
The legislator added that in the days ahead, the dividends of the summit would become manifest as, “We have asked questions bearing on these limiting factors. For instance, why is it that none of the twenty private refineries that received their licences since 2000 become operational?
“We also raised issues around the effect of our prevailing economic environment on investment in refineries”
The gathering, which was declared open by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Alhaji Aminu Tambuwal, also challenged the assumption that if the downstream sector was deregulated, investment would immediately flow automatically.
There were also sessions that examined economic models used in other clime to attain self sufficiency in petroleum products and the
business creativity, regulatory reform and legislative engineering needed for robust downstream development, he noted.
The two-day summit was attended by stakeholders in the oil and gas sector. Among whom were, Governor Godswill Akpabio of Akwa Ibom State; Senator Magnus Abe and the Group Managing Director, Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, Mr. Austen Oniwon of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.
Culled from Punch News
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