The Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, Bayo Ojulari, has revealed that running state-owned refineries was nothing but a wasted venture dissipating the country’s hard earned money.
Ojulari announced this on Wednesday in Abuja during a fireside chat titled: Securing Nigeria’s Energy Future at the Nigeria International Energy Summit 2026 where he made it known that there’s intense political pressure mounted to keep the white elephant refineries running despite the fact that the facilities were operating at monumental losses.
“On the refineries, Nigerians were angry. A lot of money has been spent, and expectations were very high. So we were under extreme pressure, extreme pressure.
“There were political pressures to keep the refinery product, lots of pressure. But when you have been trained for over 35 years to focus on commerciality and profitability, you can’t sleep with that.
“The first thing that became clear, and I want to say this very clearly, is that we were running at a monumental loss to Nigeria. We were just wasting money,” he declared.
Before he added, “We were spending a lot of money on operations, a lot of money on contractors. But when you look at the net, we were just leaking away value.
“Sometimes you make a loss during investment, but you have a line of sight to recovery. That line of sight was not clear here.”
Continued: “We decided to stop the refinery and do a quick check. We planned that if things were lined up, we would reopen and work on them…
“The crude we were taking into Port Harcourt was producing mid grade products. When you aggregate their value compared to what you put in, it was a waste.”
