The Federal Government has said that the failure of having refineries across the country owes fully to the inability of the Government to take care of them and no excuse is tenable for such.

This is according to the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mr. Mele Kyari, at a meeting with the House of Representatives committee on petroleum upstream.

“The refineries didn’t fail because there were no skilled people; they failed because we are unable to take care of the refineries and we don’t want to give excuses why we didn’t take care of it, you can blame anyone, but what we have decided to do is to make them work.”

He added: “There is no scarcity of skilled people, the will is there and our plan subsequently will be made available and I assure you that the plans we have in place will make them work and it will deliver the refineries; we have the best refiners in the world.”

He noted that a target of three million barrels per day of oil production has been set and steps are being taken to realise it before the end of 2023.

Mr. Kyari added that a target of 40 million barrels of reserves has also been set and the possibilities of achieving them are high due to the several interventions being explored by the government.

“The national target of three million barrels per day of daily production and 40 million barrels of reserves has not been attained, we are much focused today, we know it is possible, we have taken steps to realise this before the end of 2023.

“A number of interventions are ongoing, including our elaborate intrusion into the frontier basins which we announced oil discovery in the Gongola basin, and we expect many more to happen including the Anambra platform and some part of Benue, Bida and Chad basin.”