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Rilwanu Lukman, minister of petroleum resources, on Tuesday, disclosed that previous efforts by the immediate past administration to address the problem of fuel scarcity in the country by issuing 18 licenses for private refineries was frustrated by legislative deficiencies.To solve the problem, Lukman who appeared before members of the House of Representatives Committee on Petroleum (downstream) headed by Clever Ikisikpo, tasked the leadership of the National Assembly to expedite action in the passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) in order to address the problem and encourage investment into the sector. He said “nobody will come and invest his money in a regulatory environment where he would find it difficult to make profit; no one would invest his funds on refineries only to be told how much he would sell his products. 

“I am afraid the problem of fuel scarcity would continue. It is unfortunate that the four refineries which were commissioned in the 1980s were still being operated even when they are poorly maintained, they are now over aged and even with all the turn around maintenances, they could never produce the number of barrels they produced when they were commissioned”, he said.Lukman explained that a temporary measure to ease the scarcity of petroleum products is for Nigerians to continue with the payment of petroleum support fund and subsidise the price of the products, a measure, he said would be very expensive.On the issue of the aging refineries, the minister regretted that Nigeria lacked maintenance culture, citing the example of Kaduna Refinery and Petrochemical Company which had its last turn around maintenance in 1998, explaining that nowhere in the world can you turn around a refinery like that without total break down.Asked a member of the committee if in 1986 when he was petroleum minister he had a long term plan for the four refineries, Lukman responded that three of the refineries produced at full capacity with few vehicles on the road, adding that the production was surplus that the Port Harcourt refinery was reserved for exportation purposes