The country has witness tremendous charges in the deregulation of the down
stream, petroleum sector, even the
countries refineries have been working relatively well, and this has led to
increased capacity utilization from 30% to
the current 60%
this means that the country
refined petroleum production capacity
has been steadily on the increase to
further improve on this to an
internationally accepted level of 90%
capacity utilization in the next
years.
Now the original contractors
responsible of the building of the refineries have been contracted to
carry out a turn around
maintenance of these refineries as a result of deregulation
the turn around maintenance has help in
carry out the rehabilitation of the port Harcourt refinery which will take
place in the 1st quarter of the year following the
Kaduna refinery and then the
Warri refinery, thereafter, the normally
cycle of the turnaround maintenance will be respected.
Research has shown that even if the refinery in the country were to operate at full capacity, there would
still be a petrol supply gap of about
15 millions litres per day . therefore, importation will remain
inevitable until additional refining capacities are built through the on-going Greenfield refinery project. These has lead in the calling of prospect
investors into the down stream
sector, through deregulation process.
CONCLUSION
Government has a number of competing
for the limited financial
resources at its disposure and fiscal resources are needed to implement
pilot alleviating measures . Moreover, one of the
pillars of the transformation
agenda guiding current policy stance is fiscal consolidation.
To pilot the
alleviating measure will require
additional budgeting finances for
their implementation. Budgeting
additional financial resources for piloting
alleviating measures will run counter
to this policy goal.
Therefore, government aim to use the resources freed
from he subsidy removal through deregulation
to implement the identified
alleviating measures.
REFERENCES
1. Khan, Sarah A. Nigeria: The Political Economy of oil Oxford
University Press 1994.
2. Kupolokui, Funsho, Liberalization the Experience of the Nigeria Petroleum Sector
Alexander Gas and Oil Connection Volume
10 Issue No 2 , 27 Jan. 2005