Ijeoma Agudosi/Yemisi Izuora
The Turn-Around- Maintenance (TAM) which Nigeria,s four local refineries is undergoing will re-position them to refine at 90 percent capacity.
About 40 percent of that capacity will turning out Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) known as petrol.
Mr Abubakar Muhammed, the General Manager Services, of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) gave the assurance at the ongoing International conference of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) and exhibitions in Lagos.
The 38th edition of SPE conference has the theme “Natural Gas Development and Exploitation in an Emerging Economy Strategies, Infrastructure and Policy Framework”.
The NNPC director said that out of the 90 per cent production about 40 per cent would be on petrol.
He said that additional refineries would be expected at the long and short term to increase the country’s refining capacity and domestic consumption.
Muhammed said that the Federal Government was committed to the gas development and revive of gas infrastructure.
He said that the nation was in need of renovation and Petroleum Industry law that would define the country future oil and gas production and generation.
“The PIB has been in the pipeline for 15 years. We are hopeful that the present legislature will address the bill,” he said.
He said that crude oil theft had been a major challenged in the country, adding that the decline has been impacted on the on the average sale of government equity crude, with an average joint venture cash call budget of about $600 million per month.
According to him, the drop of earnings from government crude to average of about $460 million potential present yearly funding of about $4.8 billion.
This comes at a time when the cash call budget has remained unattainable in the last few years.
Management of funding is our most immediate challenge and innovative financing approach is currently being developed to address the issue.
Another challenge facing the industry he said, is the development of shale oil in Nigeria’s largest market US which has forced Nigeria to look for alternative market in Asia.
Despite these challenges we are focusing on strategic realignment of our crude oil exports to graphically and more direct and user transactions in sustainable markets, he said.
Muhammed said that crude theft and pipeline vandalism has impacted production in the last four years (2010 to 2014) from 2.4 million barrels per day in 2010 to about 2.0 million barrels per day in 2014.
He said that the significant production interruption is now a regular feature in Nigeria’s production profile, as an average 250,000 bpd was deferred.
At the price of $100 per barrel, this amounts to a loss of about $9.1 billion yearly, he said.
According to him, Crude theft from January to April 2015 stood 39.3 million barrels $3.9 billion at an average crude price of $97.9 per barrels.
The solution lies with setting up of a critical infrastructure force with accountability measures, with a continuation of enlightenment, empowerment and enforcement of anti-sabotage laws.
In a bid to address the current sub-optimal performance of domestic refineries, a new rehabilitation strategy has been adopted.