26 Jul 2006

Fiji's chamber calls for oil refinery for Fiji

8:20 am on 26 July 2006

The Fiji Chamber of Commerce wants to set up an oil refinery to ease the crisis caused by escalating oil prices.

Its president Taito Waradi has told Radio Legend that Fiji is very vulnerable to soaring oil prices and establishing a refinery is one way of becoming more independent from multi-national oil companies.

He says the chamber has proposed to the government that it set aside funds to build a refinery in its national budget for 2007.

The interim administration set up in Fiji after the 1987 Rabuka coups spent 12-million US dollars through the Fiji National Oil Corporation, with the aim of building a refinery but the loss was eventually written off without a single drop of oil being produced.