Senator Ifeanyi Ubah, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Petroleum (Downstream), has announced plans to address Nigeria’s fuel scarcity by ensuring the full operation of two refineries, Port Harcourt and Warri, by the end of 2024.
Additionally, he stated that the Kaduna Refinery would also be operational before the end of next year. These efforts, combined with the contribution from the 650,000 barrels per day Dangote Refinery, are expected to meet the nation’s domestic fuel demand.
Senator Ubah emphasized the importance of establishing modular refineries to further expand Nigeria’s domestic refining capacity.
He said, “My mandate is to ensure that the refineries in Nigeria are up and functional. By my involvement, before the end of this year, two refineries will be up and running. Also, before the end of next year, the Kaduna refinery will come on stream. Additionally, the production of jet oil and lubricants will begin by mid-next year.
I can assure Nigerians that I will tirelessly pursue and ensure that these refineries are up and running before the end of the year. We have set up a technical team to visit the refineries every two weeks in order to meet the set target.”
Seplat Energy, a Nigerian independent oil and gas company listed on both the London and Nigerian Stock Exchanges, has also announced plans to end gas flaring by 2025. Samson Ezugworie, the Chief Operating Officer of the company, revealed this at the ongoing Offshore Technology Conference in Houston, Texas, United States.
Seplat Energy aims to achieve this target with the completion of the ASA North project and Sapele gas plant, increasing its supply capacity to 850 million cubic feet of gas daily.
Ezugworie explained, “In the past, gas was perceived to be a bad business because all the oil and gas installations did not have a way of harnessing the associated gas from oil production. The associated gas was flared, thus impacting negatively on the environment. Now, that has changed in Seplat. We have made conscious efforts to harness the associated gas by putting in place gas solutions. By the second half of 2025, we will bring routine gas flaring to an end.
“With those two projects coming online and 850 million cubic feet of gas per day capacity, the gas will be used entirely within Nigeria for domestic use. We are now solving the problem of gas for power. The gas that we produce today is going into the national grid. We are committed to supplying gas for power generation. Recently, we were supposed to take a three-day shutdown of the urban gas plant to fix some asset issues and change the generators.
But because other partners that supply gas into the domestic line were not ready with their gas, we made a conscious decision not to take the three-day shutdown. Doing so would have put Nigeria in total darkness.
“However, we look forward to having another statutory shutdown in August this year. We have to continuously supply gas into the national grid because if we do not supply, we would be depriving people of power.
“As a company, we operate profitably. But gas debts are a major issue, which explains why most of the international oil companies never invested in domestic gas. In other words, many potential investors did not perceive gas as a profitable business. However, Seplat has the foresight and strategy. We know that even if you owe today, there is a chance that you’ll pay tomorrow.
A significant part of the debts has been settled. Now, we are working ourselves into the willing buyer, willing seller contracts. Also, most people that offtake our gas. We have a payment structure that ensures that going forward, we are not going to be having the debt piling up, but then they have a structured way of paying the outstanding debts.”
