DMEA: ADNOC ammonia and NNPC spending

This week’s DMEA features the first shipment of Emirati ammonia to Japanese refiner Idemitsu and an update from NNPC about its refinery rehabilitation spend.

Idemitsu this week said it had received the first shipment of blue ammonia from Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. (ADNOC) following a deal in August.

The cargo was shipped from the Fertil plant at Abu Dhabi’s Ruwais downstream hub in the west of the emirate and arrived at the 255,000 barrel per day (bpd) Yokkaichi refinery in Japan on December 9 and has now been transferred into an ammonia tank at the facility.

According to the Japanese firm, the ammonia was shipped in liquefied form using an ISO tank container. It will be used in the refinery’s boiler and furnaces to reduce nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions.

The contract was signed between Idemitsu and Fertiglobe, a joint venture between chemicals specialist OCI and ADNOC that was listed on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX) earlier this year. ADNOC was responsible for transporting the ammonia.

Idemitsu is one of several Japanese companies to have signed ammonia deals with ADNOC, with Inpex and Itochu having all agreed supply contracts this year while various South Korean firms have done the same.

Meanwhile, The Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. (NNPC) this week disclosed its operational expenditure during the first 10 months of 2021, showing that it spent NGN83.33bn ($202mn) on rehabilitating its refining facilities.

The first contracts were signed in April for the overhaul of the company’s currently defunct refining slate, which amounts to 445,000 barrels per day (bpd). Following years of operating at near-zero utilisation, the four refineries – two at Port Harcourt, one at Kaduna and one at Warri – were taken offline completely in 2019.

NNPC has budgeted NGN100bn ($245mn) for the full year and expenditure appears to be on track to utilise the full allocation.

The Nigerian government secured a $1bn loan from Cairo-based African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) in February and awarded a $1.5bn engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract to Italy’s Maire Tecnimont in April to return the Port Harcourt Refining Co. (PHRC) complex to 90% of its capacity by 2023.