Nigeria, Niger Republic to Build Oil Refinery

The Federal government of Nigeria, on Thursday, announced plans to build an oil refinery in Nigeria and neighbouring Niger Republic.

A statement by the Ministry of Petroleum Resources said Ibe Kachikwu, Nigeria’s minister of state for petroleum resources, led a Nigerian government delegation to Niamey, the Nigerien capital, on Wednesday to discuss a firm agreement for the design and construction of the refinery.

The statement said the refinery will be strategically located at a border town between the two countries.

The move is in line with the commitment to collaboratively work across the region to ensure definitive solutions to the petroleum sector challenges, Mr Kachikwu said.

He explained that the plan will be “expressed through the construction of a refinery in the border town between the Republic of Niger and Katsina State, Nigeria and a crude oil pipeline from the Republic of Niger to the new refinery”.

The statement said that the minister held talks with the president of Niger, Mahamadou Issoufou, and the country’s energy minister Foumakoye Gado.

Mr Kachikwu, according to the statement said: “Bilateral and technical agreements will be signed in coming days.”
Nigeria owns four refineries located in Kaduna, Warri and Portharcourt.
President Muhammadu Buhari had promised that he would fix the refineries during the 2015 electioneering.
But more than two years after he assumed power, a PREMIUM TIMES’ analysis of the operational report of the refineries prepared by the national oil firm, NNPC, showed that they have fared poorly since the government got into power.
The new deal with the Niger Republic is coming at a point the nation is experiencing fuel scarcity which analysts have partly attributed to the moribund state of Nigeria’s refineries.

1 COMMENT

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.