Buhari, Issoufou to sign MoU on Nigeria/Niger refinery in July

Barring unforeseen circumstances, President Muhammadu Buhari, and his Nigerien counterpart,  Mahamadou Issoufou will sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the planned 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) refinery to be located on Katsina border with Niger.
The Minister of State, Petroleum Resources, Dr Ibe Kachikwu, who gave the hint in a podcast on Wednesday on the 7 Bigwins of his Ministry disclosed that the private sector would move in to supply the funds needed to execute the project once the MoU and other formalities were wrapped up.
According to him, the project comes under Nigeria’s greenfield plan,  revealing that the MoU entails building pipelines from Niger to Nigeria since the outfit would be utilising Niger crude though of slightly lesser quality than Nigeria’s.
“We couldn’t take their crude into our own refineries. So, we will build a 100,000bpd refinery that is purely private sector driven.
“By next month, July, the two Presidents will be in Nigeria to sign off on the negotiated deal. After that, the private sector will be asked to put in funding they said that they have and begin. It’s purely private sector driven and secondly, it’s government to government deal, it ensures steady supply of petroleum products and boosts revenues via taxes. It will provide employment deepen bilateral relations”, he said. The Minister assured that Nigeria will boast of a number of refineries with total production in excess of 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2020 when most of the gigantic refineries being built by both the private sector and the government will come on stream.
“The country would boast of self sufficiency in petroleum products by the time the 650,000 bdp Dangote Refinery in Lagos; government refineries with a combined capacity of 450,000, some modular refineries and other refining outfits come on stream around 2020”  he explained.
Kachikwu said his Ministry registered about 40 modular refineries, adding that 10 of those have reached the stage where they were wrapping up financial requirements and tidying up serious engineering finalizations in such a way that they can start operations within the shortest possible time.
“In fact two of them with a combined capacity of 17,000bpd in Delta and River States are at the stage of completion and even started work. We’re looking at commissioning them between last quarter of this year and first quarter of next year.”
-Sun