FG must assist refinery license owners to stop petroleum importation

Chief Executive Officer, CEO of Genesis Worldwide Shipping and former Minister of Interior, Capt. Emmanuel Ihenacho, has called on the Federal Government to assist serious refinery license owners to actualize the construction of such private refineries.

Capt. Emmanuel Ihenacho

Ihenacho, who made this known in an interview in Lagos, said it importance for the privately owned refineries to come on stream as this is the only way to stop importation of petroleum products.

According to Ihenacho, “Then again that where the government has to come in, the government has to come in because if we can have so many modular refineries, government will reverse this polarity we have, where we are depending on imported oil all the time. If you look at the total value of import, you will see that oil actually constitutes about 70 or more percent. So if we are able to develop a local refinery capacity, we will absolutely reverse that dependency and we become exporter of finished oil.

“So government should not just read about it (efforts by private refinery license owners) and say alright go and develop it but should put motion in place to go and find out people who have been given licenses and have done all the things that we have done and say we want to lend you money and in 18 months we want to see it working and see whether it will work or not.

“They must take a proactive approach, they must do it or else the economy will forever continue to travel at this lazy pace.”

He said the process leading to the construction of his company’s modular refinery is still on and is going on well.

In his words, “the proposed refinery is absolutely on cause, what people do not realize is what one has to do if one wants to build a refinery.

“First of all you have to develop a feasibility proposal and a business plan, then after that you need to articulate the front end engineering plan; you need to acquire a site to start with, you need to present all these to Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR, they need to give you approval from DPR then you need to move on to the stage here you have to do give detailed engineering, you need to do the Environmental Impact Assessment, EIA.

“The EIA alone takes about a whole year because it has to be done through two seasons, dry season and the wet season and it is very intense because of the number of people and the activities that are lined up.

“We have done all of those things, the feasibility is articulated, the front end engineering is done, the land issues are absolutely done. What we need to do now is to articulate the detailed engineering and then we go to the fund raiser part.

On the reason for sighting the refinery in Lagos, he noted that refineries are sited in places where there is access to deep water. “We can’t site a refinery in land, how do you get your feed stuck on the refinery; unless you own a marginal field.

“So, you can site one there and then you benefit from it. I don’t own a marginal field and the investment that I have is specific to the marine environment, so it has nothing to do with politics of take it here; don’t take it here. Its industry specific, location specific and so these are the issues,” he stated.