Avuru Encourages FG To Sell Off Refineries Than Depending on Results From TAM

The managing director, Seplat Petroleum Development company PLC, Austin Avuru has advised the Nigerian National Petroleum
Corporation (NNPC) to sell all its four refineries instead of doing perpetual Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) on them, according to a
BusinessDay reports.

Avuru made this known at the ongoing NAICE 2015 organised by the Society of Petroleum Engineers, Nigeria Council. He said; “Nigeria can easily achieve a refining
capacity of 1.2 million barrels of oil per day (bpd) if Dangote’s 600,000bpd refinery comes online in addition to the 445,000bpd of all the NNPC refineries, which
if sold to competent hands would achieve its optimum production capacity”.

According to Avuru, if Nigeria achieves1.2mbpd crude oil refining capacity in addition to a natural gas production of about 7.3 billion cubic feet per day, that will translate to about 32GW of power that would enable the country “become a massive exporter of cement, fertilizer, petrochemical products and complete revamp of the downstream sector all of which will turn the oil and gas sector into
an enabler of massive industrial
development instead of just being a mere source of revenue that contributes less than 15 percent to the country’s GDP.”

Avuru also called on the need to explore for more gas reserves, saying “if an updated audit of Nigeria’s gas reserve is done, it put
the nation’s gas reserve at 120 trillion cubic feet (tcf) instead of the 170tcf being reported for over a decade now.”
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