27 January 2014, Lagos — The Federal Government on Monday announced plans to build modular refineries with capacity of between 10,000 and 25,000 barrels per day to boost domestic fuel supply.
Group Coordinator, Planning and Strategy, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, Mr. Tim Okon, who disclosed this, said this becomes necessary after efforts to get investors to build bigger refineries failed to yield positive results.
He further stated that the Federal Government was already working on the modalities of the project and was presently considering the economic benefits and the environment impact assessment, among others.
He said: “The government is working on a policy to develop modular refineries of 10,000 to 25,000 barrels per day. This will be implemented once we are able to finalise the issue of the economics, the environmental impact assessment, and other logistics.”
He blamed the inability of private investors to build refineries, despite licences given to them in that regard to a number of factors ranging from the delay in carrying out the reforms in the oil and gas sector, the non-deregulation of the downstream segment of the petroleum sector and the uncertainty of price expectations.
He lamented the fact that local refining capacity had failed to keep pace with petroleum products consumption in Nigeria, adding that Nigeria’s petroleum consumption has risen to more than 70,000 litres per day from 17 million per day in year 2000.
The NNPC had in its Monthly Petroleum Information for September 2014, put the respective average capacity utilisation for Kaduna Refining and Petrochemical Company (KRPC), Port Harcourt Refining Company (PHRC) and the Warri Refining and Petrochemical Company (WRPC) at 0.00 per cent, 8.77 per cent and 0.00 per cent respectively.
This means that only the Port Harcourt Refining Company was functional in September.
The NNPC said: “This month, zero metric tonne (mt) of dry crude oil, condensate and slop was received by the three refineries, KRPC, PHRC and WRPC. With an opening stock of 253.26 thousand mt, total crude oil available for processing was 253.26 thousand mt, out of which 74.64 thousand mt was processed.”
The NNPC further stated that total national domestic refining produced 46,920 metric tonnes of finished and intermediate products, adding that the Pipeline Products Marketing Company, PPMC, which lifts products from the refineries evacuated 174,440 metric tonnes of products.
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– Vanguard
