The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited has announced a critical June 2026 deadline to finalize the selection of technical partners for the country’s struggling state-owned refineries, marking a significant shift in strategy after years of failed rehabilitation efforts that have cost taxpayers nearly N18 trillion.
Group Chief Executive Officer Bayo Ojulari made the announcement during a press briefing in Abuja on Monday, where the company also revealed a record-breaking N5.4 trillion Profit After Tax for the 2024 financial year, the strongest performance in its corporate history.
The Port Harcourt, Warri, and Kaduna refineries, despite ongoing rehabilitation work, remain “well below international standards,” according to Ojulari, making their products commercially uncompetitive, especially when compared to the privately-owned Dangote Refinery. The three plants, with a combined installed capacity of 445,000 barrels per day, have been largely non-operational for over a decade, producing little to no output in most years.
The NNPCL boss explained that the current management is now seeking competent private partners with proven refinery management experience, emphasizing that the new strategy focuses exclusively on working with private entities that already own and operate functioning refineries. Any collaboration will be business-driven, based on solid track records and structured as commercial arrangements rather than state-driven partnerships.
“If you look at Dangote Refinery and look at the capabilities of the people running it, a lot of foreign people are there. We may not like it, but we need to review that capability, because we have lost the capability over time in terms of the overall capacity to run,” Ojulari said. “So what we are looking at is some partnership with a private entity that has existing refineries that they are running and operating. They would have that track record, and our intention is to partner with them as a business.”
He revealed that NNPCL may redesign its refineries into hybrid plants to meet global product specifications and compete internationally. However, firm completion dates will only be announced after redesign and hybridization plans are finalized, with a clearer timetable expected by mid-2026.
Ojulari warned that if the original rehabilitation plan is followed, the output would still fall “two steps below current international specifications.” The Port Harcourt plant is currently undergoing a $1.5 billion rehabilitation, Warri is being revamped under a joint programme with Daewoo Engineering, while Kaduna refinery requires an extensive overhaul and new configurations to handle more complex crude.
Years of underinvestment, weak governance, and collapsing technical capacity have left Nigeria unable to operate the refineries to global standards. The emergence of Dangote Refinery, now producing Euro-V standard fuels, has further exposed the outdated configuration and technological gap of the state-owned plants.
Beyond refining, Ojulari said NNPCL is working with partners to lift Nigeria’s crude oil output to 1.7 million barrels per day by year’s end, supported by improved security, better Joint Ventures financing, and new upstream investments. Last year’s production was around 1.5 million barrels per day, with expectations to reach 1.8 million barrels next year and an ambitious goal of two million barrels per day by 2027.
The GCEO emphasized that NNPCL now operates as a limited liability company under the Companies and Allied Matters Act, with greater commercial freedom under the Petroleum Industry Act. “We must correct a misconception. NNPC is now largely a private company. Yes, we have government oversight and national accountability under the PIA, but we are not operating as a government parastatal,” he said.
Source: punchng.com