Nigeria's Kaduna refinery to reopen next year, produce 60,000 barrels per day, says minister

Nigeria aims to reopen its Kaduna oil refinery next year, with initial production of 60,000 barrels a day, the junior petroleum minister said, as part of plans to revive local refineries that have been mothballed for years.

Africa's top oil exporter has made producing its own fuels a priority for years but efforts to revamp its refineries have failed, leaving it almost entirely reliant on importing refined crude.

The 110,000 barrels per day Kaduna refinery in northern Nigeria was shut in 2018 because of a lack of crude due to vandalism of the pipeline that supplies crude from the oil-producing Niger Delta in the south of the country.

Nigeria's state-owned national oil company NNPC said in February it had signed a $741m (R13.9bn) contract with South Korean group Daewoo to modernise the Kaduna refinery.

Heineken Lokpobiri, one of Nigeria's two ministers of state for petroleum resources, inspected rehabilitation work at the refinery on Saturday and said the plant “will be back on stream by the fourth quarter of 2024”, according to a statement late on Saturday.

NNPC chief executive Mele Kyari said once the refinery starts processing 60,000 barrels “we can start to make money from the plant and we can continue the other part of the refinery to bring it up to its full-fledged capacity”.

NNPC is also upgrading the Port Harcourt and Warri refineries in the country's south.

Nigeria's three state-owned refineries have a combined capacity of 445,000 barrels per day.

Reuters