It is believed that Some relief may come the way of Nigerians with commissioning of the 5000 barrels per day modular refinery formally by President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday this week, at Ibigwe, Ohaji/Egbema local government area of Imo State.
With the commissioning of the Walter Smith’s refinery, Nigeria inches towards local refining capacity as this is bound to reduce the country level of dependence on imported Premium Motor Spirit.
The president decided to personally inaugurate the refinery in view of the fact that the project is cardinal to his administration’s initiative to boost local refining of petroleum products to end importation and also make Nigeria the refining hub of Africa.
The minister of state for Petroleum Resources, Timpre Sylva and Imo State governor, Senator Hope Uzodinma, among other top government officials, oil industry regulators and stakeholders will be there to support PMB at the event . The president will also perform the groundbreaking ceremony for the 45,000 barrels per day refinery also initiated by Waltersmith.
As reported by Leadership newspaper, the event will also feature goodwill messages from top industry players, partners and community leaders. At a recent pre-commissioning visit to the refinery, Yusuf Usman, Chief Operating Officer, Gas & Power, said, “It is a landmark achievement and it shows that we can actually refine our crude oil in-country.”
The modular refinery has a crude oil storage capacity of 60,000 barrels and is projected to deliver over 271 million liters per annum of refined petroleum products, including Kerosene, Diesel, Naphtha and Heavy Fuel Oils, to the domestic market. The bulk of crude oil supply for this phase will come from Walter Smith’s upstream business, with backup from the OML 53 (Ohaji South) Seplat/NNPC JV third party crude currently processed at Waltersmith Ibigwe Flowstation and additionally from the 2020 Marginal Fields Bid Round for a nearby asset. Chairman, Waltersmith Group, Abdulrazaq Isa, disclosed,
“The first module to be commissioned tomorrow is 5,000 bpd refining capacity. We are looking at 50,000 bpd refining capacity that will come with the planned additional two modules; 25,000 bpd and 20,000bpd refining capacity respectively which will then add PMS, Aviation fuel and LPG to the product slates.” Waltersmith obtained the ‘License to Establish’ the modular refinery from DPR in June 2015 and got the ‘Authority to Construct’ in March 2017.
The company then partnered with the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) and Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) to raise the required financing. NCDMB are 30 per cent equity partners while AFC committed senior secured credit facility towards the project.
“From the very day we keyed into this project in line with the President’s aspiration to grow the country’s oil refining capacity, we felt very happy that we are associated with Waltersmith, a serious minded company”, said executive secretary, NCDMB, Simbi Wabote.
9News Nigeria