Refineries: Now you see them, now you don’t

refined fuel needs.

There are four refineries with a combined capacity of 445,000 barrels per day (bbl/d). As a result of poor maintenance, theft, inadequate crude supply and corruption none of these refineries has been fully operational thus confining Nigeria to continuous import cycle of over 90 per cent of its daily consumption. Just before he left office in 2007, President Olusegun Obasanjo finalized the sale of two of the refineries. Africa’s richest man Aliko Dangote, leading a consortium of investors, paid $750million for the two refineries but President Umaru Yar’Adua immediately reversed the sale. Since then successive governments have been indecisibe about what to do. They could neither fix them nor summon the political will to out rightly sell them. However, there are ongoing efforts by the current administration to obtain third party funding to fix the plants. The government has given December 2019 deadline for the plants to be fixed but as at now the announcement of successful financiers is pending.

In the absence of domestic refining system Nigeria exports crude oil and imports petrol and is currently the largest importer of petrol in the world.

There was an effort in 2002 to improve the situation when the government issued 18 new licenses to build refineries. However, most of them are yet to take off.