In a bid to end the era of petroleum products importation, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has announced plans to establish a 100,000 barrels per day brownfield refinery in Port Harcourt and Warri.
Group Managing Director (GMD) of NNPC, Dr. Maikanti Baru, said efforts are being made to achieve self-sufficiency in local refining besides the rehabilitation of the nation’s refineries.
He further revealed that a group of investors had commenced the process of relocating a refinery that used to be owned by BP from Turkey to Nigeria to be installed near the Port Harcourt Refinery under the NNPC refinery collocation initiative.
In his words:
“Our collocation initiative aimed at getting private sector investors to bring in brownfield refineries so that they can share facilities is also yielding results.
“For example, there is one that is going to be brought in from Turkey to be located near the Port-Harcourt Refinery. It’s not a modular refinery; it’s a normal refinery with about 100,000 bpd capacity. It was owned by BP, but it has been sold off now to the companies that want to bring it over from Turkey to install it here.”
The target to stop fuel importation by next year
Recall that the GMD of the corporation, Dr. Maikanti Baru, had recently announced that about 35 expressions of interest for the establishment of modular refineries had been declared and that the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) had issued licenses to 13 of them.
The modular refineries, according to Baru, will stop the illegal refining of crude and also create employment and wealth among residents of the Niger Delta.
Also, the Minister of State for Petroleum, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu had recently at the commissioning of Petrolex’s mega oil city in Ibefun Ogun State, assured Nigerians of the Government determination to end the importation of refined oil into the country by 2019.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) was established on April 1, 1977. In addition to its exploration activities, the Corporation has powers and operational interests in refining, petrochemicals and products transportation as well as marketing.
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Good job by present management team of the NNPC and the Minister of state for Petroleum. However I would like to inform that while there is a dire need of pipelines to boost production, a lot of already Coated Poly Ethylene and Heavy Weight Concrete Coated Pipes owned by the JV Partners are wasting away in a Coating Plant at Sedco Rd, Enerhen – Effurun, Warri. This is owing to management problem that resulted from failures to pay host community and other vendors huge debts for supply of coating materials, workers/management conflicts etc. A petition from the host community is underway to the honorable Minister of state, Petroleum, the GMD, NNPC and other stakeholders to that effect.