Agip to build refinery and start refining oil in 2019, says oil minister

The Nigeria’s Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr Ibe Kachukwu disclosed that the government and Agip Oil Company have agreed to build another refinery in River state.

The Minister disclosed after leading the top management of Agip to a meeting with the Acting President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo in the Presidential Villa, Abuja on Tuesday, May 9, 2017.

“In the meeting, we dealt with the issue of Agip investment in Zabazaba field and their cooperation with us in the repairs of Port Harcourt refinery.”

“We reached an agreement that Agip will build a brand new refinery of 150,000 barrels capacity which will be located in Port Harcourt or Brass, they have accepted and preparing an MOU along this line,” he said.

Kachukwu further reiterated federal government commitment to put in place measures aimed at meeting Nigeria’s local consumption need before 2019.

He also said that part of the measures is the intention to set up a new Agip refinery with the production capacity of 150,000 bpd in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.

“The effect of this is that oil companies operating in Nigeria will begin to migrate from only exporting crude and begin to look on how to start refining these crude so that we will be able to meet our local consumption.

“With this new refinery and along with other things we are going to do with the refinery in Port Harcourt, it gives us hope in our quest to try and increase our local capacity to produce every refined product we need in the country and to meet the time line of 2019. We are now going ahead to work out the modality with Agip,” the minister disclosed.

Kachukwu also revealed that in the area of power generation drive of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) drive, “Agip has the second largest plant which will be on stream by 2020.”

“This is to make sure they are not only just taking away crude but making other local investment. Total investment in area of power and the refinery from Agip is in excess of $15 billion,” he added

It would be recalled that in January, 2017 the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and the Italian oil giant ENI (E, ENI.MI) signed a memorandum of understanding with ENI committing to further investment in Nigeria’s oil and gas industry, refurbishing an oil refinery in Port Harcourt and an expansion of the Okpai power plant.

Agip to build refinery and start refining oil in 2019, says oil minister

JOIN OUR PULSE COMMUNITY!