Port Harcourt — The Federal Government has been told to set up modular refineries in all states to end the incessant scarcity of petroleum products in the country.

Speaking ahead of the first international conference and technical exhibition on petroleum refining and petrochemicals which opens in Port Harcourt today, Director, Institute of Petroleum Studies, IPS, University of Port Harcourt, Professor Godwin Igwe, said modular refineries would create more value for the nation's crude.

Professor Igwe said the international conference was being organised by the Centre for Petroleum Refining and Petrochemicals, in collaboration with the Petroleum Technology development Fund, PTDF.

According to him, the conference will come up with solutions to some of the challenges in the oil and gas sector of the economy.

He said the nation could only overcome challenges of scarcity of petroleum products when government raised the number of refineries in the country.

He said: "There is hardly any refinery producing at 60 per cent capacity in the country. If at 100 per cent functional state of the refineries in the country, they were only able to service about thirty per cent of the nation's demand for petroleum products, then imagine the situation now that our refineries are not producing up to one hundred percent capacity."