Environmental Impact Assessment Report of Integrated Oil Refinery Underway – Official

Ejiofor Alike

The Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) report of the 20,000 barrels per day modular refinery being planned by Integrated Oil and Gas Limited will be ready soon.

This followed the recent successful environmental screening meeting between the Environment Unit of the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), the technical partners/engineering consultants and the environmental impact assessment consultants for the refinery, which is to be located at Tomaro Island off the coast of Apapa port zone.

Emerging from the environmental screening meeting, the project officer of the refinery project, Mr. Tayo Ogunbanjo said every necessary step was being taken to ensure that the refinery was delivered next year as scheduled.

He said the meeting with the environment unit of DPR was part of the imperatives for the acquisition of the Environmental Impact Assessment Report (EIA) and other approvals.

Ogubanjo said the meeting examined the Front End Engineering Design (FEED) of the refinery where the Crude Distillation Unit (CDU) was explained and analysed and all concerns with how the various units would interface with the environment explained to the DPR.

He said after all the loose ends and every environmental concerns have been addressed, the company would get the EIA report.

The next stage, he explained, would be the presentation of the Detailed Engineering Design for final screening and approval after which the company would apply for the approval to construct from the DPR.

Ogunbanjo who is also driving Eko Petrochem & Refining, the special purpose company that is handling the greenfield refinery project for Integrated Oil and Gas, said the company is not leaving any stone unturned in its determination to enhance the refining capacity of Nigeria and save the citizens the agony of perennial fuel scarcity and unnecessary depletion of the foreign reserves.

Environment Manager, DPR, Mr. Adeniyi Balogun expressed satisfaction with the progress of work on the refinery project.

He said as soon as the company and its consultants addressed some issues raised by the DPR team to the workshop and satisfy other requirements as demanded by the nation’s environmental laws, the approval to begin physical work on the project would be given by the DPR.

He said the federal government was quite desirous of having private refineries take off in order to end the problem of fuel importation and its associated depletion of the nation’s scarce foreign exchange and had directed all the approving and regulatory authorities to ensure that unnecessary impediments were removed for the private refineries to be established.

Integrated Oil is frontline independent downstream oil and gas company in Nigeria involved in the importation, storage and distribution of clean petroleum products.

The company presently operates two tank farms in Apapa, Lagos with a combined capacity of 85 million cubic litres and is currently developing new state-of-the-art tank farm facilities in Kano and Calabar.