Stakeholders want FG to stop exporting crude oil
As the dwindling fortune of Nigeria continues with the falling oil prices at the international market, stakeholders in the oil and gas industry have called on the Federal Government to stop exporting its share of the crude oil.
Rather, the stakeholders, including Chambers Oyibo, former group managing director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Andrew Ejayeriese of ExxonMobil, and Ebi Omatshola, former group managing director of Consolidated Oil, advised that it should be domesticate to enhance value creation through refining.
Besides, the process will make the country enjoy other derivatives with the attendant extra foreign exchange to be earned.
According to them, doing so in this period of low crude oil prices will help the economy better than exporting the crude oil, which other countries would refine and then export the derivatives back to Nigeria as Premium Motor Spirit, Diesel, Aviation Jet oil, condensates, and so on.
Oyibo, while presiding over the technical meeting of the Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationists (NAPE), said “Nigeria’s salvation in this time of low crude oil price lies in using her resources locally so that the economy can be more vibrant.”
Nigeria has large population and because of this she is ripe to have an economic development policy that would explore the use of cheap energy for her own benefits, Oyibo said.
Ejayeriese queried why Nigeria should sell her crude oil, saying the biggest margins were in petrochemicals, and urged the government to refurbish the refineries so that they could be working and produce feed stocks for the petrochemical companies.
The government is not responding to the dwindling oil price fast enough, Ejayeriese said, adding that the government must act quickly because the low oil prices would be with us for a long time to come.
“The solution is to make the refineries work so that the crude oil can be processed into refined products,” Ejayeriese said further.
Omatshola said, while reflecting on the current reality in the oil and gas industry, lamented the fact that the country in the last 10 years had not increased her crude oil reserves base.
Omatshola urged operators to cut down the cost of production so that they could mitigate the effect of dwindling oil prices, asking “why did we have to sell our crude, gas, condensate, natural gas liquid.”
The government should not sell it own equity of the crude so that she can diversify her economy through the bye products that will come from local refineries by the time the refineries are made to work, he said.
Olusola Bello