The Nigerian government has licenced 43 new large and modular oil refineries across the country. The new petroleum products refiners will be eligible for tax waivers, the Guardian reported.
Two of the refineries will be inaugurated in next week, an adviser to Nigeria’s minister of petroleum minister was reported as saying by the Guardian. The refinery plan is aimed at satisfying local demand and export of petroleum products, the adviser said.
The government has given a certain number of refiners import waivers also to support a quick start to the oil refinery projects. Nigeria plans to double its oil production capacity by 2025, while also tripling oil refining capacity.
Nigeria’s goal is to pump 4 MMbopd by 2025 while increasing its oil refining capacity by 1.5 MMbpd.
The desperate need for an improvement in local refining capacity has been obvious for decades. The 2025 plan is extremely optimistic, an analyst for Lagos-based SBM Intelligence was reported as saying by World Oil in April.
Nigeria is the only major world oil producer that relies completely on imported refined petroleum for its fuel needs.
The newly licensed Nigerian oil refineries include a 250,000 barrels licenced refinery of Petrolex and another 100,000 barrels licenced refinery of another company at Port Harcourt. The modular Nigerian oil refineries vary from 30000 barrels to 1000 barrels capacity.
The Petroleum ministry adviser told the Guardian that two Nigerian oil refineries are ready for commissioning soon. These includes a 7,000 barrels capacity modular refinery based in Kwale. The other one is a 10000 barrels capacity oil refinery made up to two modules of 5000 barrel capacity in River State.