Oscarline Onwuemenyi
28 February 2018, Sweetcrude, Abuja – A lecturer at the Federal University of Petroleum Resources, Effurun, Prof. Ogbarode N. Ogbon, has indicated that Nigeria would require about 75 modular refineries of 10,000 litres capacity each, along with the four state-owned refineries and yet-to-be-commissioned Dangote refinery to be all operational, if it must meet the demands of local fuel supply by the year 2020.
Prof. Ogbon stated this during a session on “Petroleum Product Supply and Demand in Africa – Translating Crude Abundance to Product Abundance,” at the maiden Nigeria International Petroleum Summit (NIPS), in Abuja.
Speaking in a presentation entitled: ‘An Assessment of the Economic Viability and Competitiveness of Modular Refinery in Nigeria’, Prof. Ogbon noted that, “Come 2020 you will need modular refineries operating in this country to the tune of 75 modular refineries of about 10,000 barrels per stream day.
“You have that working or we will go back to the situation of the fuel shortage irrespective of the revamping of the refineries, irrespective of Dangote refinery coming on board.”
He added that, “You look at the local PMS production and importation and consumption. On daily basis we consume almost 51.53 million litres per day according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and on yearly basis we have local production of about 1.5bn on the average. the number for 2017 is 1.7bn litres.”
According to the don, the average yearly PMS importation to this country stands at 17.8bn litres and the average PMS consumption stands at 19.3 billion.
“Now you will agree with me that we have this statistics from several sources but we try as much as possible to see a realistic way out and come up with a realistic figure and in doing this we went straight to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) monthly financial and operational data and we used that data to come up with a trend to be able to analyze the situation.
“What we have done by way of basic assumptions and data that were used for computation and analysis …What i am saying is that if you refine one barrel of crude in the Nigerian refinery what you will be getting in terms of PMS will be 31.78%.
“If we are going to assume that by the year 2020 all the four refineries will come on board operating at full capacity and Dangote will come on board operating at full capacity, we have deduced that we will be able to have 18.48 billion litres in a year by the year 2020 that is fantastic because what we have this year is 18 billion litres. Is that what we actually want? What about the rate of increase but again I also stand to be corrected,” he added.
