Nigeria aims to end imports of petroleum products next year

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ABUJA (Reuters) – Nigeria plans to stop importing petroleum products by or around the third quarter of 2023, its petroleum minister, Timipre Sylva, said on Tuesday.

Sylva said a refurbished refinery in the town of Port Harcourt in the oil-producing Niger Delta would deliver 60,000 barrels a day of refined crude by the end of December.

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The Minister also said that he still expects the new Dangote refinery to come into operation in the first quarter of next year.

“We expect that we will quit the import of petroleum products from maybe the third quarter of next year if I were to give it a longer deadline, but I think that even before the third quarter of the next year, » Sylva said.

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Nigeria’s crude output has improved to around 1.3 million barrels a day from less than a million barrels previously, and the country hoped to hit its OPEC quota by May next year. , Sylva told reporters in Abuja.

Oil is Nigeria’s main source of export revenue, but crude oil theft and vandalism of pipelines have reduced oil and gas production, costing the country its place as Africa’s top producer.

Nigeria trades its crude for refined petroleum products but is upgrading the Port Harcourt refinery at a cost of $1.5 billion.

With high world oil prices, Nigeria wants to refine its own fuels. Its earlier efforts to revamp its refineries stalled, leaving it dependent on imports. (Reporting by Felix Onuah; Writing by MacDonald Dzirutwe and Estelle Shirbon; Editing by James Macharia Chege, David Evans and Alexander Smith)