Page 11 - DMEA Week 02 2023

DMEA FUELS DMEA

Nigeria to be fuel self-sufficient in 2024

AFRICA NIGERIA’S Minister of State for Petroleum stake in the Dangote Refinery,” he noted.
Resources Timipre Sylva said on January 9 that Also in 2023, Sylva added, Nigeria is on
the country is on track to become self-sufficient track to see several small modular refineries
in the production of refined fuels sometime next completed. The plants will boost the country’s
year. oil-processing capacity, and the federal govern-
The primary factor driving Nigeria’s shift ment stands to benefit directly from such pro-
from dependence on imported petroleum prod- jects, he said.
ucts to self-reliance will be the launch of the Dan- “The federal government took [a] 30% equity
gote Refinery, Sylva explained. He was speaking stake in each of the 5,000 bpd Waltersmith mod-
at the 16th session of the PMB Administration ular refinery in Ibigwe, Imo State, and the 10,000
Scorecard Series (2015-2023), an ongoing cycle bpd Duport modular refinery in Edo State,
of discussions hosted by the Federal Ministry among others,” he noted. Abuja will work with
of Information and Culture to highlight the private investors to help ensure steady deliver-
achievements of President Muhammadu Buhari. ies of crude oil to the new modular facilities, he
The minister noted that the Dangote Refinery, declared.
which will be the largest single-train oil-process- Meanwhile, Sylva said, state-owned Nigerian
ing plant in the world, was scheduled to come on National Petroleum Co. Ltd (NNPCL) expects
stream before the end of 2023. The full design to wrap up all outstanding rehabilitation work at
capacity of the refinery, which bears a price tag the Port Harcourt Refining Complex (PHRC),
of $25bn, will be 650,000 barrels per day (bpd), a 210,000-bpd facility that includes two oil-pro-
Sylva stated. (According to previous reports, cessing plants, by the end of the first quarter of
the facility will begin operating at a capacity of 2024. Once PHRC’s units are available, he said,
570,000 bpd and ramp up gradually.) Nigeria will be in a position to turn out enough
This project will benefit the public directly refined fuels to meet its own needs.
even though it is being led by the privately owned “With the combined production of the
Dangote Group, since the state is a shareholder, Port-Harcourt refinery, [the] Dangote Refinery
he stressed. “To ensure local supply of the [fuel] and the modular refineries, Nigeria would end
production by the private refineries, the federal importation of petroleum products into the
government deliberately took [a] 20% equity country,” the minister said.7™

Angola urged to eliminate subsidies

AFRICA JOSÉ Severino, the president of the Industrial “The most subsidised [person] of all in the
Association of Angola (AIA), has urged his economy is the smuggler, so we have to make
country’s government to eliminate subsidies for this a matter of policy that is not the responsi-
domestic petroleum products. bility of the police, who do what they can but
Severino told the Lusa news agency on Janu- are not omnipresent,” he commented. “And the
ary 8 that the price supports distorted the local more you involve the police, the more you are
fuel market and were causing the country to lose overloading the OGE [general state budget].”
money to the tune of $200mn per year. Severino acknowledged that the govern-
Subsidies encourage smuggling, he declared, ment’s fuel subsidy was well intended, as it was
referring to the practice of purchasing petro- designed to make gasoline and diesel more eas-
leum products at low prices in border towns in ily available to disadvantaged consumers.
Angola and then selling them at higher rates in He argued, though, that the losses incurred
neighbouring countries. through smuggling were outweighing the ben-
“[This] is the old dilemma of the Angolan efits of the subsidies and urged Luanda to take
economy, which has been dragging on for doz- corrective measures – especially with respect
ens and dozens of years,” he remarked. to diesel, which accounts for the majority of
Luanda has allowed the problem to persist cross-border sales.
rather than attempting to settle it, he said, and “The state has to have money to bring
as a result, the price of motor fuel is now lower benefits to those who don’t have energy – to
than that of water in many parts of the country. farmers, for example – and for that it has to
This situation has caused damage to the Ango- have resources, which have to start coming
lan economy and hurt ordinary consumers, he from the balance of what is the sale of fuel,” he
complained. explained.™

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