Former Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr Ibe Kachikwu, speaks with journalists on a wide range of issues, including challenges he faced while in office. OLUSOLA FABIYI, who was part of the team, reports

Do you think you have set the industry along the right path and is there anything else to be done to take it to what President Muhammadu Buhari called the ‘next level’?

You are absolutely right and that is why if you listened to the video, you would realise that it was talking about continuity and being able to sustain what was ongoing. I think one of the things we have done is to ‘socialise’ the policies. We went to the Federal Executive Council, we passed the Petroleum Industry Bill, we passed the gas policy, and we have submitted the final copies of the fiscal policy. That wasn’t taken unfortunately. The things that we have done around gas specialisation came out from there; the refinery project that we want to kick off came out from there. Infrastructure project and Niger Delta militancy also came out from there. We worked very closely with the National Assembly on the passage of the bills so I strongly believe that the policies are fantastic but the biggest thing is to make them laws. Unfortunately the very first one, which is the mother of legislation, the Petroleum Industry Governance Bill, was not signed by the President because of few amendments, some of which we supported but that is being done by the National Assembly and should probably be ready now.

You were unable to give Nigerians refineries as promised as well?

You are right. It is one area where I think we did not deliver the mandate and I am bold enough to say that. Recently, I think I saw something like ‘Kachikwu failed to deliver on his five promises on refineries’. I think it is a misunderstanding of how the system works. I started within as Group Managing Director and also as Minister of State at that point; most of the powers and work were centered on me. If you look at the refineries, the first problem we had was that they were not functioning when I assumed office in 2015 and because of the huge apparent fuel scarcity; it was a major problem for me if I had to wait for vessels to arrive each time to meet the delivery timeline. These were the problems. So I was focused on how to get them working, at least to start, no matter how little and all they gave me was one million litres a day.

The pipelines that were supplying fuel had all been destroyed and they had entered into a contract before we came in, to supply product by vessels. The cost of those vessels supplied was more than the value of the crude oil that was being supplied. It did not make any financial sense. So I cancelled that and challenged Nigerians who were in this entity to go and use their money to repair the pipelines.

Source:- Punchng

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