AfrOil: Nigeria’s state-owned refineries seen back on stream by end-2024

Nigeria expects its four state-owned oil refineries to be operational by the end of 2024, according to Heineken Lokpobiri, the country’s oil minister. Reuters quoted him as saying that the first of the group, the two-unit 210,000 barrel per day (bpd) Port Harcourt Refining Complex (PHRC), might resume work as early as this December.

Lokpobiri, who recently began serving as Nigeria’s Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, said on August 25 while inspecting ongoing refurbishment work at PHRC that two other facilities, the 125,000-bpd Warri and 110,000-bpd Kaduna plants, should start processing crude next year.

A series of campaigns to restart or expand the state-owned refineries have been announced by successive oil ministers and heads of Nigerian National Petroleum Co. Ltd (NNPCL). However, all have failed.

Currently, PHRC is undergoing a $1.5bn upgrade led by Italy’s Tecnimont, which was awarded a contract for the project in 2021. Nigerian officials said in April 2022 that the revamp was expected to take 44 months to complete.