Despite the current 445,000 barrels per day (bpd) capacity of the country’s refineries and Dangote’s 650,000 bpd refinery expected by 2020, Nigeria will still have a shortfall of 427,000 bpd, equivalent of 20 million litres of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), per day.
Dr. Maikanti Baru, Group Managing Director of Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), who disclosed this yesterday in Abuja, said the country would need a refining capacity of 1.52 million bpd in order to meet its PMS requirement by 2025.
Delivering a state of the industry address at this year’s Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) Oloibiri Lecture Series & Energy Forum, Baru said Nigeria’s petroleum product demand is expected to grow from 13.2m metric tonnes (MT) in 2015 to 15.1m MT in 2020 and 17.3m MT by 2025 while the population growth corresponding to this demand is 182m in 2015, 207m in 2020 and 234m in 2025 respectively.
He said in order to address the imminent shortfall in PMS demand, NNPC would be adding 215,000 bpd of refining capacity through private sector driven co-location at its existing refineries in Port Harcourt (100,000 bpd) and Warri (115,000 BPSD) respectively.
“Additionally, NNPC through its new initiative of establishing Condensate Refineries with private sector participation is providing clusters for in-country refining capacity totaling about 250,000 bpd which closes the PMS supply-demand gap and creates positive margins to the investors,” he said
The NNPC boss said the improved in-country refining capacity plan will ensure Nigeria’s domestic crude oil utilization of up to 66 per cent with its attendant local manufacturing multiplier effect from associated industries such as petrochemicals for plastics and polymers used in everything from computers, medical equipment, wind turbines, solar panels, cosmetics, etc.
