FG Planning To Sell Refineries To Cronies — Oil Workers

Oil workers, under the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association (PENGASSAN) and Nige­ria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NU­PENG), accused the Federal Government on Monday of planning to sell the nation’s refineries as scraps to its cro­nies secretly.

Presidents of the unions, Comrade Ndukaku Ohaeri and William Akporeha, said in Lagos that the develop­ment had caused the gov­ernment to embark on cheap blackmail against their mem­bers on account of perceived opposition to the act.

The reaction of the unions’ helmsmen is coming after a recent virtual inter­view of Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timi­pre Sylva, where he disclosed that the sorry state of the re­fineries should be blamed on the attitude of workers who, despite the non-functional nature of the refineries in the last three years, are still re­ceiving salaries and had even threatened to embark on an industrial action when the Group Managing Director of the NNPC threatened to sack supporting staff in the refineries.

The workers punctured the minister’s position, say­ing it was laced with false­hood and misrepresentation, adding that government should be blamed for the neglect, inefficiency, incom­petence, lack of transparen­cy, and policy somersault in the running of the nation’s refineries.

Nigeria’s refineries post­ed a cumulative operational deficit of N9.6 billion in Jan­uary this year, according to the report of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corpora­tion (NNPC) which manages the country’s three refineries – the Kaduna Refining and Petrochemical Company, the Port Harcourt Refining Com­pany, and the Warri Refining and Petrochemical Company.

Confidential report­ed that the refineries ended 2019 with N149.23 billion loss as they jointly closed the 2019 fiscal year in deficit. The re­port stated that the facilities pulled cumulative revenue of N68.96 billion but jointly incurred a total expense of N218.18 billion in 2019.

Data from the national oil firm showed that KRPC, PHRC, and WRPC posted N2.1 billion, N4.38 billion, and N3.12 billion losses, re­spectively, in January 2020.

The expenses of each of the refineries outweighed their revenues, thereby re­sulting in the losses.

Kaduna refinery record­ed revenue of N2.84 billion in January but incurred an expense of N4.93 billion.

The Port Harcourt and Warri refineries made N10 million and N36 million, respectively, as revenues during the period under re­view.

Their expenses were, how­ever, far higher as the refin­eries spent N4.39 billion and N3.15 billion, respectively, in January this year.

The Group Managing Di­rector, NNPC, Mele Kyari, recently stated that the cor­poration would no longer be involved in the management of refineries after their reha­bilitation.

Kyari had stated that upon completion of the ongoing rehabilitation exercise, the services of a company would be procured to manage the plants on an operations and maintenance basis.

But puncturing the gov­ernment’s plan to sell the re­fineries, the two unions, in a statement obtained by Daily Independent, said it was in­appropriate to sell the refin­eries on the strength that they were huge national as­sets which should rather be revitalised for security and strategic reasons, and oper­ated profitably.

The unions said: “We are waiting and watching out for them to unfold while we put the general public, civil society organisations, and the organised labour on alert.

“Our resolve to protect the rights and interests of our members and the oil and gas industry remains unshak­able even in the face of these cheap blackmail and high­handedness of both the cur­rent minister and the Group Managing Director of NNPC.

“In the light of the above, the union and the association are using this opportunity to call on the Minister of State for Petroleum and other rel­evant stakeholders in the industry that the union and association will not allow any backdoor introduction of any policy, be it privati­sation of these refineries or full deregulation of the downstream sector.

“Our refineries must be put into functional use with­out further delay. Finally, the leaderships of NUPENG and PENGASSAN further enjoin all our members to persevere and exercise ex­treme restraints at all times, as tough times don’t last but tough people do. Let us re­main united and avoid divi­sive tendencies, because our unity is our strength.”

The unions noted that they had offered lots of ad­vice on different occasions to successive managements of the NNPC on how to put these refineries in functional operations through various internal channels of commu­nications and had generally restrained themselves over the years from washing the dirty linen of the corporation in public when their advice was jettisoned.

“Only recently, the unions had sensitised its members in the Warri Refining and Petrochemical Company’s Quick fix Start-up Commit­tee to deplore all their ener­gy to ensure that the refinery was brought back on stream.

“Just when all was set, management deflated all preparations and shelved the exercise.

“Information from Port-Harcourt Refining Com­pany (PHRC) is the same: TAM and rehabilitation have been postponed to first quar­ter of 2021. What then could be the crime of workers in that?

“It’s also on record that this regime has been in pow­er since 2015, yet the refiner­ies have not been fixed even with all the funds pumped into it and all the sacrifices of the irrepressible workers.

“Suggestions from the union and the association to adopt the NLNG model to revitalise the refineries have never been given serious con­sideration by government because of her ulterior mo­tives,” the unions said.

On the purported threat of the Group Managing Di­rector of the NNPC to sack workers, the unions said the action had already been car­ried out with the sack of 850 support staff in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, throwing almost a thousand workers into a hard financial situation.

They clarified that they never threatened to go on strike but only demanded to be engaged for proper dis­cussion on the commensu­rate terminal benefits of the workers who had served or made themselves available for service for a period rang­ing from 10 to 15 years.

According to them, “Lis­tening to the uncharitable tone of the minister on the contract staff as if they were slaves and useless calls for serious concerns by all well-meaning Nigerians.”