The Federal Government, yesterday, said it would soon unveil the private investors in refineries in a bid to further boost the nation’s refining capacity.
Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Ibe Kachikwu, said he wants Nigeria to have a floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) unit for the production and processing of hydrocarbons, and for the storage of oil in 10 years.
He regretted, however, that Nigeria’s low refining system meant it is almost wholly reliant on imports for the 40 million litres per day of gasoline it consumes.
Kachikwu also hinted that multinational oil firms may soon be barred from shipping out all the crude oil they produce in Nigeria. He said this in Abuja at a break-out session of the maiden Nigeria International Petroleum Summit (NIPS) titled, “Deepening Collaboration in the African Oil and Gas Industry – Challenges and Opportunities for Investment”.
According to the Minister, the government is planning to put frameworks in place for the multinational oil and gas firms to build refineries in Nigeria so as to process substantial amount of crude produced from its oil fields locally.
“We would get to a point where Nigeria, definitely, would be a major supplier of refined petroleum products. It just has to happen. Nothing else makes sense. We are also saying directly to oil companies that a time would also come when we would not be open to see them move around all the crude oil they produce in Nigeria.
“We will like to see integrated refining and integrated processing here. It gives us more jobs and creates more investments,” Kachikwu said.
He said currently, the nation had an average in-country refining capacity of 14 per cent but this would be upgraded to between 90-95 per cent in 10 months to meet rising demands.
Kachikwu said henceforth oil has to provide the resources to power the country, provide jobs for Nigerians and provide the operational environment transparent enough for others to take Nigeria serious.
The session had in attendance the United States Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr. Stuart Symington; Minister of Petroleum of Chad, Mr. Bechir Madet, and the Secretary General of the International Energy Forum (IEF), Dr. Sun Xiansheng, among others.
