By Camillus Eboh
LAGOS (Reuters) – Nigeria’s oil refinery in Port Harcourt will start processing 60,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil in the first quarter of 2023, four years after it was shut for an extensive upgrade, the country’s junior oil minister said on Wednesday.
The Port Harcourt refinery is undergoing a $1.5 billion modernisation after Italy’s Tecnimont was last year awarded the contract to carry out the work.
“The commitment is to deliver 60,000 barrels per day from this refinery by first quarter of next year, and, of course, we are quite happy,” Timipre Sylva, minister of state for petroleum resources said in comments aired on African Independent Television.
“This project kicked off second quarter last year and where they are now is quite impressive. It is on schedule.”
The upgrade will take 44 months to complete, Sylva said.
With global oil prices rising, Africa’s top oil exporter wants to refine its own fuels, but its previous efforts to revamp its refineries have stalled, leaving it almost entirely reliant on imports.
There are four refineries in Nigeria with a combined capacity of 445,000 bpd – one in the north at Kaduna and three in the oil-rich Niger delta region at Warri and Port Harcourt. The Port Harcourt complex consists of two plants with a combined capacity of 210,000 bpd.
(Reporting by Camillus Eboh; Additional reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe; Editing by David Holmes)
