Chief Executive Officer, ARPHL, Omotayo
Adebajo said the engagement followed the
conclusion of negotiations with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation
(NNPC) to acquire a 10 per cent equity stake in ARPHL’s 100,000 barrel per day
refinery at the same location.
The Front-End Engineering Design (FEED)
Contract is the first step towards implementing a plant for the processing of
up to 100,000 barrels per day of crude oil.
The plant will be developed at the Port
Harcourt Refinery Battery Limited due to be operational in 2025.
Messrs Tecnimont SpA, a leading global oil
and gas refining, chemical and petrochemical, fertiliser and power EPC company
will act as the FEED contractor for the refinery.
The 100,000bpd name plate capacity refinery
will process crude oil and produce Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), Automotive Gas
Oil (AGO), Jet A-1, Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), and Low Pour Fuel Oil
(LPFO).
Based on the Federal Government’s
plan, the NNPC in 2016 advertised a
Request for Proposal in major newspapers, seeking bids for private investors to
invest in the collocating of crude oil refineries within its refinery sites in
Kaduna, Port-Harcourt and Warri, towards increasing Nigeria’s national refining
capacity from 445,000bpd to 695,000 bpd in the shortest time.
By a bid conducted by NNPC in-line with the
Bureau of Public Enterprise (BPE) guidelines, ARPHL emerged the collocation
partner to run and operate a 100,000bpd refinery on 45 hectares within the
battery limit of the PHRC in Alesa-Eleme, Rivers State.
In response to the new business reality
post-COVID-19, ARPHL and NNPC reviewed the original plan to relocate a
brownfield crude oil refinery and will now construct a 100,000 bpd Greenfield
refinery to be installed adjacent to the 210,000 bpd Port Harcourt Refinery
Complex.
The project is scheduled to be completed
within three years.
This project is an integral part of NNPC’s
plan to upgrade the network of its mid-stream and downstream assets in
South-South and South-East Nigeria, that includes the refurbishment of the Port
Harcourt Refineries and the various crude oil/petroleum pipelines, NNPC tank
farms and oil depots.
This is a project that would employ at
least 15,000 Nigerians during construction and another 2,000-post construction
aligning with the local content regulations beneficial to the Nigerian people
and the Nigerian economy in general.
Under the terms of the agreement with NNPC,
ARPHL will be solely responsible for private sector led efficient and
sustainable management, operations, and maintenance of the refinery upon
completion. This marks another major step towards fulfilling NNPC’s promise and
commitment to support and boost domestic refining capacity required for Nigeria
to become a net exporter of petroleum products.