Nigeria to begin exportation of petroleum, petrochemical products in 4 years

Kachikwu who is also the Group Managing Director, (NNPC) explained his plans for the oil sector; he said that plans are in place to bring Dangote’s private refinery on board and majorly to co-locate new refineries within the already existing refineries in Kaduna, Warri and Port Harcourt.

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“We have advertised recently for co-located refineries and asking people to come and co-locate new refineries into our refineries’ premises so that they can share pipelines, tankages,” said stating the benefits of the plan.

The petroleum minister noted that it would take about three years to co-locate refineries and begin production; Kachikwu said that if all goes as planned, Nigeria would produce more than it needs and begin exporting.

We are working hard to see that we can complete whatever refinery upgrade we are trying to do within the next 12 to 18 months and obviously for the co-located refineries which are the new ones, targeting to see that we are able to finish within two to three years,” he said.

Adding that Dangote will come on stream between 2019 and 2020.

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“If we do that, obviously we will have excess production capacity for refined products and bear in mind that obviously Dangote is also bringing in its refinery which probably is hitting up about 2019/2020.

“At that point, we begin to look at export market and that really is what we should be doing given the sort of behaviour of oil prices today,” Kachikwu said.

Kachikwu added that importation of refined petroleum and petrochemical products does not portray Nigeria in a good light, as it solve unemployment; Nigeria loses tax amongst other things.

He emphasised on why these projects should be accomplished within the stipulated period.

“The policy on the whole is that we must target a time frame of 12 and 18 months to get out of importation.

“It is not good for the country, it is not a good image, it does not create jobs and we lose tax when it comes to the government and creates a huge amount of quite frankly, emotional backlash when people have to queue looking for fuel,” said Kachikwu.