Waltersmith Petroman Oil Ltd. subsidiary Waltersmith Refining & Petrochemical Ltd. has started precommissioning activities for the first 5,000-b/d phase of its previously announced 30,000-b/d modular refinery at Ibigwe oil field, in the Ohaji Egbema Local Government Area, Imo state, Nigeria (OGJ Online, June 19, 2018).
With precommissioning at the site now under way, Waltersmith is on track to deliver the project ahead of its initially planned 18-month construction schedule, said Chikezie Nwosu, Waltersmith’s chief executive officer, in a series of recent posts to his official LinkedIn account.
Initially scheduled for commissioning during second-half 2020, the refinery’s first phase—which will produce about 271 million l./year of refined products, including diesel, naphtha, high-pour fuel oil, and kerosine—is scheduled to start up in May, according to a separate release from the Nigerian Content Development & Monitoring Board (NCDMB), which holds a 30% interest in the project (OGJ Online, July 9, 2018).
A groundbreaking ceremony for the project’s second phase—which will include a 25,000-b/d crude and condensate refinery designed to produce gasoline, diesel, LPG, kerosine, and aviation fuel—also is planned in May, according to a Dec. 23, 2019, release from the African Energy Chamber.
The proposed project comes as one of many in the wake of the Nigerian Department of Petroleum Resources’ previous licensing awards to private investors to establish refineries in Nigeria as part of the federal government’s strategy to expand the country’s existing refining capacity through use of modularly constructed refineries (OGJ Online, Jan. 11, 2018).
The new refinery initially will process Nigerian crude from 7,000-b/d Ibigwe onshore field in eastern Niger Delta—also operated by Waltersmith—into marketable fuel products for the domestic market.
