Abstract

When it became public knowledge that NNPC upon becoming NNPC Limited may have left over N136 billion as operational deficit in its three refineries in Kaduna, Warri and Port-Harcourt, and that a total of 1,657 workers had been on their payrolls receiving salaries and not producing a single drop of fuel on the admission of Mele Kyari (GMD) that the three refineries had been shut down because of their operational un-sustainability, and that the NNPC Limited had not deposited a dime into the coffers of the State in the past six months (as at September, 2022), and that the N2.38 trillion made from crude oil sales within the period under consideration had gone into repairs of refineries, Frontier Exploration Funds, domestic gas development and the Moroccan pipeline project, the average researcher would be appalled. This study which adopts the doctrinal method examines the arguments for and against the turn-around of the Port-Harcourt refinery and the prospects of the three refineries. It is a study situated within the crisis that hit the capitalist world in the 1970s that found expression in Nigeria in the 1980s during the Shagari administration when austerity measure led to its overthrow by the military and the eventual imposition of structural adjustment programme and the virulent campaign of stagnation of public enterprises and withdrawal of the State from business. The refineries became the first-line casualties. Its findings are bleak on all fronts and it observes that the State is yet to come up with policy options that would rescue the petroleum economy from the woods.