The new 650,000 barrels per day refinery being built by Aliko Dangote, Africa's richest man in Nigeria is expected to come onstream by the end of 2019, Nigeria's Minister of State for Petroleum Resources Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu said on Tuesday. Nigeria's state oil firm NNPC last year launched bidding to find partners to overhaul its ailing refineries, which hardly produce any petrol due to decades of mismanagement and widespread graft.
"That should be enough to meet local needs," Kachikwu told an oil and conference in Cape Town, referring to the Dangote refinery. Kachikwu said Africa's biggest economy was also close to finalising the process to get private partners to revamp three existing refineries, which would add a cumulative total of 450,000 bpd as Nigeria looks to reduce its dependence on imported refined products.
Kachikwu said the response from private investors has been enormous and to date the ministry has had 26 firms have indicated interest to invest $2 billion needed to revamp the refineries. "We are almost at a threshold of finalising the process of selection," he said. "We expect to till soil sometime hopefully in January/February," he said.
The government has previously said it was in talks with Chevron, Total and ENI.
