Newsbase - Downstream Middle East & Africa News Monitor Subscribe to download Archive

DMEA: Jazan launch and Nigerian scrutiny

Two refineries that have previously faced complications made the news this week for very different reasons.

In Saudi Arabia, state oil firm Aramco announced that operations had begun at its Jazan refinery on the Red Sea coast near the border with Yemen. While the facility has come on stream at around 200,000 bpd, it will soon ramp up to full capacity of 400,000 bpd with crude for the remote unit being shipped around the Arabian Peninsula from Ras Tanura. Its location has seen the refinery targeted by Yemen’s Houthi militia, while Aramco last year redrew plans for the facility’s shipping berths, causing work on major units to be halted and the location of already constructed units to be moved.

Meanwhile in Nigeria, following the approval of $1.5bn of state funds to be provided for the rehabilitation of the Port Harcourt refinery, politicians have cast aspersions on the move, with Nigerians weary of years of downstream failures. Concerns have been raised that the money could be better spent elsewhere and given that state-owned NNPC failed to carry out turnaround maintenance at the facility for 42 years, claims that it “is questionable wisdom to throw good money after bad” appear well placed.

However, the 210,000 bpd unit is also believed to be the subject of a loan led by Cairo-based African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank). Meanwhile, work to rehabilitate the refinery comes under a broader 18- to 24-month project across the four state-run refineries designed to restore output to at least 90% of nameplate capacity, with work originally anticipated to be completed by 2023.