The Edo Refinery and Petrochemicals Company Limited (ERPCL) is struggling to operate at full capacity due to a lack of crude oil supply, despite being a fully functional refinery.
The company’s management has been facing significant challenges, and the situation has not improved since President Bola Tinubu’s directive on crude oil supply to local refineries.
The refinery’s representative, Segun Okeni, revealed that the company has existing crude oil supply agreements with Seplat Energy and ND Western since 2022, but bureaucratic bottlenecks have prevented them from accessing the necessary crude feedstock. Despite multiple meetings, correspondences, and communications with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) over the past three years, the company has yet to receive any supply.
In August 2021, the refinery’s management team met with the NNPC CEO and top management team to discuss their intention to purchase crude oil from the corporation. They immediately wrote a letter seeking crude supply, dated July 22, 2022. However, the company claims that NNPC has not taken any concrete action to address their concerns.
In July 2022, NNPC representatives visited the refinery for site inspection and to confirm its mechanical completion. The refinery officials also wrote to the Ministry of Petroleum Resources in March 2022, informing them of their refinery status, future projects, and challenges related to the lack of crude oil supply. Additionally, they had a meeting with NNPC Exploration and Production Limited (NEPL) between November 2022 and March 2023, emphasizing their severe need for crude oil supply from oil fields where NEPL has equity stakes.
Okeni emphasized that the refinery needs NNPC and other crude oil suppliers to put loading infrastructure in place to enable truck loading. The company’s plea comes as another major refinery, Dangote Petroleum Refinery, recently reported that it had not received its allocated 29 million barrels of crude oil from the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC).
The Edo refinery’s crisis highlights the ongoing challenges faced by local refineries in Nigeria, which are struggling to operate efficiently due to inadequate crude oil supply. The situation has raised concerns about the country’s ability to meet its domestic energy demands and the long-term sustainability of local refineries.
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