Imperatives of Modular Refineries and their Impact on Product Availability in Nigeria

Nigeria is richly blessed with crude oil, with a proven reserve of 37billion barrels. Despite the abundance of this "black gold", Nigeria has over the years lacked the capacity to meet the country's demand for petroleum products locally and has resorted to the importation of petroleum products. This is largely due to the fact that the four state-owned conventional refineries, with a combined refining capacity of 445,000 bpd have been operating below optimal conditions, with a combined capacity utilization of 17% in 10years, from 2009 to 2018. Though establishing conventional refineries is highly capital intensive and significantly takes a long time to build and commission, the modular refinery option is however a less capital intensive alternative. This paper discusses the vital roles or importance of modular refineries as well as how it impacts on the availability of petroleum products in the Nigeria. It was discovered that Nigeria has lots of benefits to reap from exploiting modular refinery initiative, amongst which are eliminating fuel shortages and deficits, job creation, overall improvement of the economy and GDP growth, conservation of foreign exchange, among others. It was concluded that the right policy drive to encourage investors to dive into this initiative be put in place to enable Nigeria transit into an exporter of petroleum products.