The Federal Government and its partners in the upstream oil and gas industry are working out modalities for the construction of a 200,000 barrel-per-day Greenfield refinery which is expected to come onstream within the next three years. But its earlier target of 40 billion barrels of crude oil reserves by the end of the decade is no longer feasible owing to several constraints, according to Dr. Funsho Kupolokun, Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). Speaking at the opening of the 2007 annual international conference and exhibition in Abuja yesterday, Dr Kupolokun said the Corporation was syndicating two Greenfield refineries working in conjunction with its joint venture partners.

Although he did not put a time frame on when the refineries would come onstream, Vanguard investigations revealed that owing to pressure from the Presidency, the Corporation expects the plant to be ready by 2010. He said the financial details were still being worked out by the five multinational companies involved in the refinery project. These are Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Total and Agip and reiterated that the Corporation was working hard to come up with a regulation to compel every producer to refine a certain percentage of their production. He noted that earlier directives that 50 per cent of production be refined locally failed because they were not backed by legislation, adding: “When the regulation comes, they cannot give excuses.”
 
Kupolokun recalled that the Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna refineries (all subsidiaries of the Corporation) had been working at 85, 70 and 75 per cent installed capacities before the Chanomi Creek pipeline was vandalised and pledged that efforts were on to restore capacity.However, he said owing to the situation in the Niger Delta, the NNPC could not find a contractor to go and effect repairs on the Chanomi Creek Channel pipeline. The Chanomi Creek Channel pipeline provides crude oil feed-stock for the Warri and Kaduna refineries.

The Group Managing Director said to grow and become one of the 20 largest economies in the world, Nigeria must boost its fuel consumption from 30 million litres per day to 100 million litres per day within the next 20 years.“To become one of the top 20, we need to grow the Gross Domestic Product by 10 per cent annually, and this will involve enormous energy requirement. This is because the GDP has a relationship with energy consumption. From 1995 to 2005, consumption of products rose by 6.4 per cent.
“In view of the new target, Premium Motor Spirit (petrol) will grow from 30 million b/d to 100 million b/d. Gas will rise from five billion cubic feet/d to 20 billion cf/d,” he said. He said although Nigeria has tremendous crude oil and gas capacity, it has only grown production by five per cent per annum over the last 10 years. He named factors militating against the possibility of achieving the 40 billion barrels target to include the cycle of violence in the Niger Delta, rising cost of operations and funding constraints.
‘To achieve the 40 billion barrels reserves mark, we need to make three giant finds each the size of Bonga in the next three years.

Vice President Goodluck Jonathan while declaring the 2007 annual international conference and exhibition open said government was looking forward to a time when Nigerian content would account for 70 per cent of oil industry input. He said government would come up with stronger legislation to support Nigerian content, adding that while efforts at the federal level was on to address the situation in the Niger Delta, the states and local governments in the area must come alive to their responsibilities.