Nigeria will be net exporter of petrol by 2024 – NNPC
The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC) said yesterday that the current policy interventions by the federal government will likely turn Nigeria into a key exporter of petroleum products by 2024.
The group chief executive officer of the company, Mr Mele Kyari stated this in his presentation at the Energy and Labour Summit organised by the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) in Abuja.
He said in spite of challenges, the country was already witnessing some positive outcome of the subsidy removal announced by President Bola Tinubu on May 29, 2023.
He said the government was determined to deliver on its policy of ensuring immediate benefits of sufficient in-country volumes while creating export revenue.
“Today, we export 100 per cent of our productions, no resource-dependent country does this and that is why we must deliver on our mandate. I don’t want to speak about it; when it is done, you will see it.
“So, I don’t want to tell you we are going to revamp our refineries. That is too much of PowerPoint talks. So, it will be done and you will see it. I don’t want to speak about it; we are tired of speaking about it.
“But what we must achieve is that this country must be a net exporter of petroleum products and this is within sight.
I strongly believe now, without giving you a date so that people don’t get angry again, but in 2024, this country will become a net exporter of petroleum products.
“When we refine locally, we do have advantages, creating wealth, creating taxes, and all forms of value chain, creating employment, and so on and so forth,” Kyari declared.
Speaking on the vision for deregulation of the petroleum downstream sector, ThisDay quoted Kyari as saying that one of the unintended outcomes of the policy on fuel subsidy was its crippling effect on the operations of the NNPC which he said was forced to bear the cost of the subsidy not backed up by funds from the 2023 budget.
He said the policy decision to extend the fuel subsidy to May 29, 2023, was not backed with monetary allocation which forced NNPC to stretch itself to its fullest and almost became bankrupt.
Recalling the issues that led to the removal of subsidy on petrol, Kyari said: “So by 17th of February, there was simply no legal basis, no legal provision to put subsidy on petroleum and that market should determine the price of petrol and that the state should take responsibility to ensure that consumers are protected from the price fluctuations.
“And of course, we are dealing with a very big country, over 200 million people in population. Huge issues around economic inclusion. And therefore, it became very obvious that it was not practicable to stop the placement of subsidy on PMS
“So the national assembly, in its wisdom, decided that can we provide for financing until 30th of June 2023, so that we can now close that gap and then have the right conversation and get ready to ensure that we are addressing this appropriately.
“Obviously, budget is one thing. Funding is a different thing. Since 2022, when that provision was made, until the 29th of May, not a single naira was paid to the NNPC Limited as cost of subsidy.
“That means we were carrying it entirely on the balance sheet of the NNPC. We’ll hold back fiscal revenues, taxes, royalties, including properties, and yet, because we are seeing values exceeding N400 billion in a month of subsidy, there was no way the fiscal obligations would cover for the subsidy.
“So we were heading towards what we can technically call bankruptcy of the NNPC. Because we would have gone into negative cash flow.
“By the end of June 2023, we would have been in negative cash flow. What it simply meant was that the NNPC would have been bankrupt if that bold decision was not taken by Mr. President.”
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