FG okays construction of 5,000-barrel IkweOnna refinery, targets completion 2019
The Federal Government, through the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), has approved the construction of Ikwe-Onna Refinery to be located in Ikwe, Onna Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State.
The Approval To Construct (ATC) license for the modular refinery was conveyed to the investor in a letter with reference No:DPR/E&S/FAC/6239/ S.308/V.2/23 and dated October 15, 2018.
A copy of the approval letter and the refinery project schedule seen by Daily Trust shows the refinery capacity to be 5,000 barrels per day .
The project, which is estimated to cost $60m, is expected to be commissioned November, 2019.
The ATC was issued following the satisfactory attainment of the requirements for the license. In Nigeria, there are three stages of licencing for the establishment of private refineries: Licence to Establish (LTE), Approval to Construct (ATC) and Licence to Operate (LTO).
With the issuance of the ATC licence, the refinery investor is expected to commence on-site construction of particularly the refinery storage tank farm, mechanical, electrical and other installations, office complex and control room, power plant installations, as well as pipelines.
These processes, according to the project schedule, are supposed to last till October, 2019, when the company is due to apply for the LTC and commence production.
Daily Trust reports that the Muhammadu Buhari administration, as part of effort to increase local refining capacity and stop petroleum product importation, has issued more than 20 licenses to establish modular or mini refineries.
The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, recently performed the ground breaking of a 5,000 barrel per day (bpd) modular refinery owned by Waltersmith Refining and Petrochemical Company at Ibegwe in Ohaji, Imo State.
Two other modular refineries: OPAC Refinery in Umuseti, Kwale in Delta State and the Niger Delta Petroleum Resources Refinery, Ogbelle, in Rivers State, which have a combined 17,000 barrels per day capacity, are also expected to be commissioned in 2019/2020. The Managing Director of Total E&P Nigeria Ltd, Mr. Nicolas Terraz Terraz, has suggested to stakeholders to prioritise fixing the many problems weighing down the optimisation of gas resources rather than focusing on building new infrastructure.
Speaking at a session on “Gas Infrastructure Development” during the just concluded Nigerian Gas Association (NGA) 11th International Conference and Exhibition, Terraz said the industry really needed to interrogate whether it was optimising the use of existing gas assets.
The MD, who was represented by the company’s Executive Director, Asset Management and New Energies, Mr. Patrick Olinma, added that the industry should be looking at other bottlenecks, which if not dealt with, could hinder the sector.
He said, “For instance, we and several other independent companies use the Trans-Niger Pipeline (TNP), which is a very crucial pipeline, to evacuate gas. When we make our plans we consider 25 per cent nonoperational outage. This has nothing to do with maintenance or operational issues, but with security, vandalism and all sorts of things going on in the Niger Delta. I am talking about an existing pipeline not a new infrastructure.”
Continuing, Terraz said the problems in the power sector had equally contributed to domestic gas supply challenges.