NNPC to partner with Spanish REPSOL to boost refining capacity

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has expressed willingness to work with the Spanish National Oil Compa­ny (REPSOL) to boost its re­fining capacity.

Presently over 80 percent of petrol consumed in Nige­ria are imported from foreign refineries. The nation’s four re­fineries located in Port Har­court, Warri and Kaduna have over the years operated far be­low installed capacity due to poor maintenance and short­age of crude oil due to pipeline vandalism.

 

The Group Managing Di­rector of the Nigerian Na­tional Petroleum Corpora­tion (NNPC) Dr. Maikanti Kachalla Baru said, while re­ceiving the Spanish Ambas­sador to Nigeria, Mr. Alfonso Barnuevo to the NNPC Tow­ers in Abuja on Thursday, that Nigeria and Spain are ready to strengthen their bilateral trade relationship especially in the oil and gas industry for the benefit of the two countries.

 

A statement by the corpora­tion’s Group General Manager, Public Affairs Division, Garba Deen Muhammad said Baru noted that NNPC as an inte­grated oil and gas company is currently undergoing trans­formation which includes in­creasing the corporation’s re­fining capacity.

Baru added that the cor­poration would work closely with the Spanish REPSOL to improve the technical capac­ities of the refineries.

He said: “As you know, we have challenges with our re­fineries and with REPSOL re­fining about 900,000 barrels of crude oil per day, we can col­laborate on that, going for­ward.

 

“While we are fixing our re­fineries, we also have the op­portunity to bring in more petroleum products into the country to meet our domes­tic needs,” he added.

 

He stated that the corpora­tion was partnering well with some Spanish companies in the area of Liquefied Natu­ral Gas (LNG) also known as cooking gas.

 

The GMD also expressed NNPC’s desire to boost saf­er energy utilisation in the country through promoting LPG consumption, explain­ing that the corporation was also working on the Trans Sa­hara Gas Pipeline Project and would rely on the technical support of some Spanish com­panies towards addressing the challenges of gas supply.

 

Earlier, Ambassador Bar­nuevo said Nigeria and Spain have an established cordial re­lationship dating back to over three decades.

“This visit is to further strengthen these good ties be­tween our nations and in par­ticular, between NNPC and REPSOL,” Ambassador Bar­vueno stated.

 

According to him, Spain is Nigeria’s 2nd best client in the area of oil and gas. The country currently buys about 4.6billion Euros worth of oil and gas from Nigeria.

 

He explained that in the first Quarter of 2015, Spain repre­sents nine per cent of the total export from Nigeria.

“Therefore, NNPC and REPSOL will benefit tremen­dously from sustaining this collaboration,” the Ambassa­dor added.