President Muhammadu Buhari will Tuesday inaugurate the 5000 barrels-per-day (bpd) Waltersmith Modular Refinery in Ibigwe, Imo State and also conduct the ground breaking for a separate 45,000 bpd refinery.
With a storage capacity of 60,000 barrels, the project will expand the local market by 271 million litres of refined products comprising diesel, kerosene, heavy fuel oils and naphta based on estimates, the Waltersmith Group said on Monday in a statement.
“We are looking at 50,000bpd refining capacity that will come with the planned additional two modules; 25,000bpd and 20,000bpd refining capacity respectively which will then add PMS, aviation fuel and LPG to the product slates,” said Abdulrazaq Isa, chair of the Waltersmith Group.
The group received a ‘License to Establish’ the plant from the Department of Petroleum Resources in June 2015 after which it obtained the ‘Authority to Construct’ some twenty one months after.
It proceeded to strike a synergy with the Africa Finance Corporation as well as the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board to raise funding.
The crude oil for the current phase will come essentially from Waltersmith’s upstream unit and Oil Mining Lease 53, a joint venture between Seplat Petroleum and Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation.
The rest will be provided by crude from Waltersmith Ibigwe Flowstation and a nearby oil asset.
