I/Coast to stop petrol export to Nigeria

Ivory Coast plans to stop refined petrol export to Nigeria in ten years’ time from now to meet growing domestic demand, an official of the country’s oil refinery has hinted.

The Société Ivoirienne de Raffinage (SIR), located in the country’s commercial capital, Abidjan, provides Ivory Coast with nearly all of its refined petroleum products and supplies a number of neighbouring countries, including Nigeria.

Nigeria is SIR’s primary supplier of crude oil and main purchaser of refined petrol, taking 36 per cent of its refined fuel export, SIR said on its website.

Around 35 percent of SIR’s output was consumed domestically in 2011, with the remainder exported.

But Reuters reported the Managing Director of SIR, Thomas Camara, saying on the sidelines of an energy conference in Yamoussoukro at the weekend that domestic consumption increased to 50 percent last year.

He said that with Ivory Coast’s postwar economy booming and growth rates nearing double digits, demand was expected to rise further.

“In ten years, the refinery’s total production will be absorbed by the national market and nothing will be left to export,” he said.

The refinery, which has the capacity to process over 80,000 barrels of crude daily, hit a 30-year production record of 3.45m tonnes of refined products in 2015 and output was on track to rise further in 2016, Camara added.

Nigeria imports majority of its refined petrol from Europe as decades of poor maintenance, corruption and mismanagement have left the country’s refineries barely operational.

But the country’s situation would change by 2019 after the completion of Aliko Dangote’s 650,000 barrel per day oil refinery with capacity to produce 55.2m litres of petrol daily.