The Federal Government of Nigeria, says it may consider selling the Port Harcourt refinery after the planned rehabilitation which is valued at $1.5 billion.
Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva disclosed this during a live TV interview over the weekend.
He said after the planned Rehabilitation, the refinery will be handed over to a professional company to manage it and not the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.
“Then this time, we are going to get a professional Operations and Maintenance ( O&M) company to run the refinery. This time it is not going to be NNPC or government that will run it after we rehabilitatate it,” he said.
“At that point, when the refinery is working at full capacity, the government will then take a decision what to do with it; either to sell it off to private sector or to privatize it. Whatever government wants to do with it will be done after the rehabilitation but let us ensure that we are able to give Nigerians a functional refinery first,” he added.
