African Refinery Awards Maire Technimont SpA Phase 1 Contract

Bennett Oghifo

Ahead of the full implementation of its Refinery Project in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, African Refineries Port Harcourt Limited (ARPHL) has announced the award of Phase 1 contract for the collocation of a Greenfield Refinery to Messrs Maire Technimont SpA, a leading global Oil & Gas Refining, Chemical & Petrochemical, Fertilizers and Power EPC company as the FEPC contractor. The 100,000bpd name plate capacity refinery will process Nigerian crude oil and produce Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), Automotive Gas Oil (AGO), Jet A-1, Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), and Low Pour Fuel Oil (LPFO).

This follows the conclusion of negotiations with NNPC to acquire a 10% equity stake in ARPHL’s 100,000BPD refinery at the same location. This was contained in a statement issued by the C.E.O. of ARPHL Mr. Omotayo Adebajo recently.

The Front-End Engineering Design (FEED) Contract is the first step towards implementing a plant for the processing up to 100,000 barrels per day of crude oil and 10,000 barrels per day of sustainable aviation fuel or Biojet at the existing Port Harcourt Refinery Battery Limit. The plant is due to be operational in 2025.

In line with the Federal Government’s strategic plan the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) in 2016 advertised a Request for Proposal in all major newspapers, seeking bids for private investors to invest in the collocating of crude oil refineries within its existing refinery sites in Kaduna, Port-Harcourt and Warri, towards increasing Nigeria’s national refining capacity from 445,000BPD to 695,000BPD in the shortest possible time frame.

By a transparent bid process conducted by NNPC in-line with the Bureau of Public Enterprise (BPE) guidelines, ARPHL emerged the collocation partner to run and operate a 100,000 BPD refinery on 45 hectares of vacant land within the battery limit of the Port Harcourt Refinery Complex (“PHRC”) in Alesa-Eleme, Rivers State.