The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has inaugurated eight committees charged with the task of revamping the nation’s refineries.
Maikanti Baru, Group Managing Director of the corporation, said in a statement on Wednesday that the committee is to help return the refineries to their “optimal levels of performance”.
Baru charged them to deploy “out of the box solutions” to ensure the refineries returned to their good old days of top class performance.
“I am convinced that the teams we have selected here today will give the necessary direction towards returning the refineries back to their optimal levels of performance,” the GMD told members of the Committees.
Although the target for the refineries rehab was to return them to 90% capacity utilisation before the end of 2019, Dr. Baru stressed that with more commitment from the committees, 100% capacity utilisation was achievable.
“We want to show everyone that we can fully run the refineries. You must all work together to operate them at 100% capacity as this was the only way to ensure profitability,” Dr. Baru stated.
The GMD also emphasised the importance of the workforce as according to him “we can fix the refineries but without the right people to operate them, they would go back to where they were or even worse.”