Mr Wale Tinubu
The Nigerian petroleum sector is bedeviled with many challenges that hamper its growth, the Group Chief Executive of Oando Plc, Mr Wale Tinubu, has said.
He said all the sub-sectors in the industry need serious reorganisation to make them perform better.
Speaking at the Nigeria Oil and Gas conference in Abuja, Tinubu said the upstream sector is dominated by international oil companies that are denying local firms the opportunity to operate competitively.
According to him, the local firms are finding it difficult to compete because they hardly can access loans from banks.
In the midstream, Tinubu said poor implementation of good policies of government and lack of infrastructure such as pipelines are behind the rot in the sector.
He said the downstream remains stagnant because of price regulated regime of products, poor refining capacity, high demurrage charges on imported products among others.
He said the way out is for government to deregulate the downstream fully, fix the infrastructure and eliminate bureaucratic red tape that lead to the delay of project approval.
There is urgent need for government to get the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) passed and increase frequency of the bid rounds by the government and IOCs, he said.
