Eni's Nigerian subsidiary Agip is planning to build a 150,000-barrel per day refinery in the Niger Delta.
An agreement was signed by the federal government and Nigerian Agip Oil Company (NAOC) for the project.
A meeting between Agip officials and acting President Yemi Osinbajo was held in this connection to initiate discussions on the proposed investment.
Following the meeting, an agreement was reached on the need to create a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for Agip to develop a refinery with a capacity of 150,000 barrel per day (bpd) in the Zabazaba field, found in Oil Prospecting Lease (OPL) 245.
Nigeria Minister of State for Petroleum Ibe Kachikwu said: "We just finished a meeting with the acting president and Agip. In the meeting, we dealt with the issue of Agip's investment in the Zabazaba field and their cooperation with us in the repairs of the Port Harcourt refinery.
"We reviewed, following my meeting with Agip, an agreement that the firm will build a brand new refinery of 150,000 bpd capacity which will be located in Port Harcourt or Brass.”
The deal with Agip is claimed to have been done by the Minister to discourage domestic oil firms from continuous fuel imports and rather have them to locally refine oil.
Further, the deal was in line with the government’s commitment to boost capacity for domestic production and consumption of petroleum products with an objective to put an end to fuel imports in the country inside a scheduled period.
Image: Agip to build a $15bn refinery in the Niger Delta. Photo: courtesy of supakitmod/Freedigitalphotos.net.