By Ngozi Onyeakusi—– Group Managing Director (GMD) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mallam Mele Kyari, has said that Nigeria lacks the resources to build a greenfield refinery currently at a estimated cost of $12billion. He made the clarification while reacting to insinuations by critics that the $1.5 billion approved for the rehabilitation of the Port Harcourt Refinery would be enough to build a brand new refinery, noting that a new refinery would cost Nigeriabetween $7 billion and $12 billion which be hard to find at the moment. This was even as Kyari defended the $1.5 billion Port Harcourt refinery rehabilitation amid widespread condemnation, saying it was a worthy undertaking. On the propriety of spending so much to repair an old and disfunctional refinery that could easily have been sold off, the GMD explained that the refinery is a strategic national asset which should not be sold off just like that. On the financing for the project, the NNPC helmsman said that African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), as a reliable lender, has agreed to raise $1billion towards the rehabilitation project.