$1.5B Rehabilitation: FG May Sell Off Port Harcourt Refinery

The Minister of State for Petroleum, Timipre Sylva, has revealed that the federal government may sell off the Port Harcourt Refinery after it has been rehabilitated and working at optimal capacity.

Sylva made this statement on “Politics Today” a Channels TV Flagship programme on Sunday.

According to him, “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”.

Speaking further, he said, “I know there has been discussion about selling the refineries. There was actually a time that the refineries was actually sold and then that decision was also reversed. in the history of the refinery, a lot has happened.

The thinking is that you do not sell a refinery that is not functioning. It is not every sale that led to success. For example, we sold Ajaokuta Steel plant but it did not make any difference. The people who bought it only tried to cannibalised it and then try to sell it off.

We believe that if you sell a refinery that is not working, the people who buy it might just decide to cannibalise it and then sell it off. And then what are you going to say since you have sold it”.?