The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has revealed that Nigeria is in talks with two United States (US) companies, Bechtel and KBR to help the country sort out the challenges of petroleum refining and other projects in the oil and gas sector.
The Chief Executive of
the Company, Mele Kyari said that Nigeria is discussing with U.S. companies
including Bechtel and KBR regarding potential projects including oil
refineries, pipelines and gas projects.
Kyari, who spoke at a Webinar organised by the Atlantic
Council said Nigeria is working toward ending refined petroleum products
importations in the next three years.
He said the government is aiming to make a final investment decision on building a condensate splitter, a simple refinery that can process extra-light crude, by July. It will have a capacity of 50,000 barrels per day (bpd) initially, rising to 200,000 bpd.
According to him, the country is taking a new approach to fixing the nation’s ailing refineries and would seek partnerships with private companies to finance, fix and run them. “We have a new framework,” he said of the refinery projects. “This will enable others to help us.”
Efforts to revamp the refineries have failed for years, and NNPC shut them down entirely in April. But Kyari said he was confident they could get them up and running again. He also spoke on Nigeria’s compliance with the OPEC+ attempt to cut crude oil output, noting that the country’s current daily oil production over complies with its promised cuts under an agreement among major oil producers.
Kyari said that if all
countries that are part of the OPEC+ deal complied, there would be no need to
extend the agreement into August.
He said that Nigeria had not complied completely with its
promised cuts in past months, but that its current reductions would ensure that
it had made up for that by July. “Our actual daily production indicates
we’re in an over-conforming situation,” he said. He, however, did not
disclose the production figure for the current month.
