The Federal Government has disclosed that Nigeria will be a net exporter of petroleum products by 2022 with the five built refineries across the country and the 7 refineries that are currently under construction.
The disclosure was made by the Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), Sarki Auwalu, in Lagos, during a working visit by the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, to their headquarters.
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Auwalu gave assurances that the importation of petroleum products would reverse when the new refineries come on stream within the next 2 years.
He said that this would be achieved through the combined capacity of 375,000 barrels per day from 27 modular refineries, 650,000 barrels from the Dangote refinery, and the 450,000 barrels from the government-owned refineries after their rehabilitation.
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According to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), Auwalu specifically said that the Dangote refinery and petrochemical project with a capacity of 650,000 barrel per day, which is the biggest in Africa, Waltersmith refinery with 7,000 capacity per day, and others that are at the completion stage, would soon come on stream.
He also disclosed that the existing 5 refineries included the 4 plants owned by the Federal Government through the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and the one owned and operated by Niger Delta Petroleum Resources.
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Going further, the DPR boss stated that the agency hoped to grow its oil reserve to 40 billion barrels and gas to 210 trillion cubic feet, in addition to growing oil production from the current level of 2.4 million capacity to 3 million production capacity and reduced cost of production.
In his response, Lai Mohammed commended the management of DPR for the measures which were implemented to prevent the coronavirus pandemic from crippling the nation’s economy.