The Minister of State for Petroleum Timpreye Sylva said that the introduction of fuel subsidies is to blame for the suboptimal operations of refineries in the country.
Sylva said this during his defence for the scheduled revamp of refineries in the country.
Recall that the federal government announced the repairs of the Port Harcourt refinery with $1.5 billion, a plan that was met with strong criticisms.
Sylva said that the “constraint” of subpar production output of refineries in the country would be fixed with deregulation.
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He noted that “Subsidy is one of the reasons why our refineries are not functioning optimally. That constraint will be taken away with deregulation. That is why we must now fix our refineries, so that they can function optimally in a deregulated regime.
“It is better to privatise/concession a functioning refinery than a non-functioning one.”
