The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu has disclosed that the federal government’s plans to have modular refineries built in Nigeria has begun to gain some traction as equipment for some of them were expected to arrive the country soon.
Speaking through his Senior Technical Adviser on Efficiency, Mr. Johnson Awoyomi, at the 2018 edition of the annual Oloibiri Lecture Series and Energy Forum (OLEF) organised by the Society for Petroleum Engineers (SPE) in Abuja, the minister explained that institutional investors had also begun to show interests in investing in the Niger Delta.
Kachikwu had recently also stated through another of his technical advisers, Mr. Rabiu Suleiman, that the government was in talks with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), International Finance Corporation (IFC), and Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) amongst others to provide contributory finance to investors in modular refineries in the Niger Delta region.
He also stated that the government would as part of incentives to encourage investments in modular refineries, guarantee regular crude oil supply to them, in addition to tax and customs duties waivers that would be given to them.
However, in his remarks at the recent OLEF, Kachikwu, noted that the government has made tremendous progress in its modular refineries campaign to improve Nigeria’s capacity to refine petroleum products in-country.
He said: “The efforts in Big Win 2 – Business Environment and Investment Drive, on improving our business environment have yielded positive results. We have been able to attract investors into the entire value chain. Our assiduous refinery drive has resulted in an almost-concluded process that would stimulate the flow of private investments into the revamp of our three refineries.
“Modular refineries have also successfully garnered traction, with already established modular refinery equipment on their way to the ports of Nigeria. Institutional investors are portraying confidence in the productive engagements we have had with the Niger Delta.”
The minister equally added in his remarks: “Via our Big Win 5 – Transparency and Efficiency, we have successfully implemented necessary actions that have lowered the unit technical cost of production. A specific example is advocating for more collaboration across the entire value chain of our petroleum industry; this has resulted in elimination of duplicated efforts.
Costs decline due to lesser capital that would have initially being expended in exerting single efforts.”
