The Federal Government, on Thursday, held a workshop to put in place a framework for the concession of petroleum products’ pipelines to private investors in order to address the incessant vandalism of the assets.
Pipelines nationwide are solely owned by the Federal Government and have been under repeated attacks by vandals, a development that has significantly reduced the country’s crude oil output.
As part of measures to address this, the government stated on Thursday that it would concession all the assets to private investors, with the belief that the investors would manage the pipelines better.
The Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Petroleum Resources, Gabriel Aduda, disclosed this on the sidelines of the workshop, which had the theme, “Development of Framework for the Concession of Nigeria’s Oil and Gas Assets.”
“There are some challenges. We’ve been talking about vandalism. But if the private sector comes in, perhaps they will be able to safeguard their own pipelines more than the government is doing on its own,” he stated.
Aduda, who was represented by the Director, Midstream, FMPR, Felix Okeke, added, “So we are looking at getting the private sector to be involved.