The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr Ibe Kachikwu, has said that multinational oil firms would soon not be able to ship out all the crude oil they produce in Nigeria, as they would be compelled to build refineries in Nigeria to refine some of the crude locally.
Kachikwu announced this in Abuja at a break-out session of the maiden Nigeria International Petroleum Summit (NIPS) titled “Deepening collaboration in the African oil and gas industry – challenges and opportunities for investment”.
According to him, the government is planning to put frameworks in place for the multinational oil and gas firms to build refineries in Nigeria thereby processing a substantial amount of crude that is produced from their oil fields.
“We would get to a point where Nigeria, definitely, would be a major supplier of refined petroleum products. It just has to happen. Nothing else makes sense. We are also saying directly to oil companies that a time would also come when we would not be open to see them move around all the crude oil they produce in Nigeria. We will like to see integrated refining and integrated processing here. It gives us more jobs and creates more investments,” Kachikwu said.
