The Corporation’s spokesman, Dr Kennie Obateru in a
statement said that the decision is in line with a Federal Government policy
directive which stipulates the mandatory participation of the Corporation in
any privately-owned refinery that exceeds 50,000 barrels per day capacity in
keeping with its statutory role of safeguarding national energy security.
In this regard, the Corporation, according to the statement,
has identified at least six refinery projects in which it intends to seek
equity participation, five of them are at the development stage with the
Dangote Refinery being the largest of them.
Obateru explained that NNPC a the National Oil Company of
Nigeria primarily has a dual role of providing stewardship for the nation’s
hydrocarbon resources and adding value to the resources for the benefit of all
Nigerians and other stakeholders.
These roles, Obateru said enable it to achieve the twin
objectives of providing energy security for the country and stimulating the
nation’s economic development and growth.
He said that NNPC’s strategic objective to ensure energy
security and stimulate economic growth with limited resources requires it to
consider strategic partnerships with competent investors in sectors of the oil
and gas value chain especially where it currently operates on a sole risk
basis.
“The oil refining sector is one of such segments where NNPC
is revisiting its strategy in order to strengthen domestic refining capacity
and guarantee National Energy Security.
“The new vision is to grow domestic refining capacity,
improve petroleum products supply from our local refineries and become a net
exporter of petroleum products.
“The Corporation assured that the move to seek equity
participation in the private refineries would not undercut its commitment to
the rehabilitation of its own refineries and strengthen the domestic refining
sector, stressing that the overall goal is to boost the nation’s refining
capacity with a view to becoming a net exporter of petroleum products in the
soonest possible time and boosting the nation’s economy”.