Petrol price to come down – Osinbajo

Vice- President Yemi Osinbajo has said the government is working on a medium-term reduction of the pump price of petroleum products by collaborating with
private refineries and reducing importation.

He said there was no going back on the incumbent
administration’s commitment to unbundle the Nigerian

National Petroleum Corporation to make it more efficient.

Osinbajo, who left the country on Wednesday for the United
Kingdom to sign the Nigeria-UK solar energy agreement,
told Bloomberg in an interview that the government would
also encourage private refineries to reduce the importation
of petroleum products, adding that the Petroleum Industry
Bill would be broken and sent in pieces to ensure its speedy
passage.

He said the government was aware of the inefficiencies of
the refineries, adding that the government would bring
private refineries on board so that most of the petroleum
products would be refined locally.

He said, “We are going to be unbundling the NNPC so that
its various components are effective core centres and are
able to do their business well. We are going to have private
refineries at the site of the old refineries, so they can benefit
from the available infrastructure.

“So, we think that in the medium term, we would be able to
get cheaper pump price, pump price of oil would be cheaper
because we would be importing far less refined petroleum.
A lot of that will be produced locally.

“Now, we have well over 30 modular refineries licences, so
we think a lot of modular refineries would come. Many of
them, their major concern is feed stock, are we going to be
guaranteed feed stock? We are working on that. 

Once we
are able to deal with that, we feel we would substantially be
able to reduce pump price and get the whole business of
importation of refined petroleum and the NNPC just getting
directly involved in business; we are going to reduce that.
The objective is to make the NNPC play more regulatory
function.

“They are options that are always there. But we think that
there are ways we can raise our own potion of contribution
to the Joint Ventures. It will only be a last resort and we
have not come anywhere near that.”

Speaking on the PIB, the VP said, “Separating the PIB and
breaking it up obviously is the way I would think that we’ll
proceed…that’s really what the market has been waiting
for.”