Modular refineries in Nigeria are currently facing the threat of shutting down operations.
This is following their inability to access foreign exchange for the purchase of crude oil, a commodity priced in United States dollars.
Nigeria has 25 licenced modular refineries with a combined capacity of producing 200,000 barrels of crude oil daily.
Although not all of the plants are currently operational, it was gathered that the functional ones were increasingly finding it difficult to purchase crude due to the worsening foreign exchange crisis in the country.
Brent, the global benchmark for crude, traded at about $80/barrel on Sunday and had remained within that range for months.
With an estimated capacity of 200,000bpd, the modular refineries, if fully operational, would refine about $16m (or N25.14bn if Thursday’s official closing rate of N1,571/dollar is used.”
Annually, it means the modular refineries has capacity for about 73 million barrels annually, representing about $5.84bn worth of crude oil.
But the facilities, which produce Automotive Gas Oil, popularly called diesel, Dual Purpose Kerosene or kerosene, naphtha and black oil, are now finding it hard to make the refined products available to oil marketers for distribution to consumers.
They explained that the scarcity of dollars had made it almost impossible for operators to purchase crude oil, as the modular refinery players and oil marketers demanded for the sale of crude oil in naira from the Federal Government.
The modular refinery operators, who spoke under the aegis of Crude Oil Refinery Owners Association of Nigeria, also lamented that the Federal Government had not been able to keep its part of the bargain with respect to the provision of feedstock to local crude oil refiners.
