By Harry Awurumibe, Editor, Abuja Bureau
Despite the huge sums of money said to have been spent on the Turn-Around Maintenance (TAM) of the moribund Port Harcourt refinery, a Nigerian Economist and Energy expert, Kelvin Emmanuel has pointedly posited that the facility and others in Kaduna, Eleme and Warri will not be operational anytime soon.
Emmanuel said this in an interview with Channels Television breakfast programme Morning Brief monitored by Prompt News in Abuja on Monday.
He insists that the Port Harcourt refinery will not come back on stream, stating that the best it can offer Nigeria is to operate as a petrol blending plant.
According to the Energy expert and co-founder of Dairy Hills, the huge sums of money spent in the so-called rehabilitation of the Port Harcourt refinery running into billions of dollars have gone down the drains as the refinery will not become operational again because it could not be fixed.
He insists that the claims by the federal government through its agencies that the Port Harcourt refinery has been technically repaired is false, arguing that the best the refinery will be used is for petrol blending plant.
Emmanuel also painted a a gloomy picture of the cost of Premium Motor Spirits (PMS), saying that the pump price will not come down soon because Nigeria does not have pipeline infrastructure to evacuate crude oil and refined products across the country hence the retail prices are high because when the marketers add up all the charges from the landing cost of products to trucking and heap them on the end users.
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