The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC Ltd) has chosen a performance-driven funding model for financing the Port Harcourt and Warri refineries, with the aim of making the facilities commercially sustainable.

Biztellers reports that this is a strategic move away from the practice of loans backed by crude oil production, which has been in place for years.

According to the NNPC Ltd, both refineries must become financially self-sustaining, as the national oil major moves to a new commercial model that requires the plants to raise financing for their operations rather than rely on loans.

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The Group Chief Executive Officer of NNPC Ltd, Bayo Ojulari, disclosed this on Tuesday while speaking at the Nigeria Oil and Gas Conference in Abuja.

Ojulari added that the company’s long-term strategy is to ensure the refineries operate as commercially viable businesses capable of attracting financing on their own.

He said future financing for the refineries would be tied to their productivity and operational performance rather than crude oil volumes.

“You heard me talking about our refineries. We’re moving away from situations where the refineries are taking loans based on barrels and not linked to the productivity and performance of the refineries. We are changing that.

“Our solution has to be that those refineries are able to work, raise their own, and deliver, not more contractors coming to take value. That’s the strategy. That’s sustainability. And that’s what will live beyond us,” Ojulari said.

The NNPC Ltd’s boss explained that the company had already begun restructuring its investment portfolio by eliminating projects that lacked clear financing and profitability prospects.

“We recognise that our portfolio has put NNPC into a lot of problems in the past years, where a lot of infrastructure development projects do not have a clear line of sight to finance. They do not have a clear line of sight to profitability. We eliminated all of that from our portfolio last year,” he said.

He added that the company had introduced a new financing model for major infrastructure projects, citing the Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano gas pipeline as an example.

“For the first time, we put in a new financing for infrastructure that has never been done in Nigeria, ‘Project Nexus’, where we are able to put financing against the AKK pipeline based on its own throughput, not from another barrel from anywhere. That is the way we are going,” Ojulari stated.

He said the same commercial principles would underpin NNPC Ltd’s refinery ambitions, which he noted would rely on integrated partnerships across engineering, logistics, technology and marketing.

“Our refinery ambition depends on integrated partnership. You can see that across engineering, logistics, technology, and marketing. Our energy transition journey requires collaboration with innovators and researchers, development institutions and new technology,” he added.

A 700,000-bpd East African oil refinery proposed by Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, will be built in Kenya, a senior company official said Tuesday, putting a lid on speculation over the location of the mega-project.

The massive refinery, similar to Dangote’s sprawling complex in Nigeria, will be based in Lamu, an island off the coast of Kenya, Edwin Devakumar, the vice president in charge of oil and gas at Dangote Industries Limited, told AFP.

It will take around 30 months to build the facility in east Africa’s largest economy.

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Initially, Tanzania was also one of the locations considered for the refinery.

Nigerian billionaire Dangote was in Tanzania late last month where he held talks with President Samia Suluhu Hassan, where he explained “the commercial and technical considerations behind the Group’s decision to locate its planned East African refinery in Lamu”, according to a statement from his office.

He also invited Tanzania to participate in the Lamu investment.

The Nigerian industrialist had previously said he was leaning toward the Kenyan city of Mombasa, before making the Lamu announcement.

Dangote, whose 650,000-bpd refinery in Nigeria came online in 2024, is the largest on the continent and plans to more than double its capacity to 1.4 million bpd — which would make it the largest refinery globally — by 2028.

AFP

The Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) has pledged to run the sector with stricter standards of transparency, equity, and predictability as the country navigates three major industry shifts in five years.

Authority Chief Executive Mallam Rabiu A. Umar gave the assurance on the opening day of NOGEnergyWeek 2026 at the Bola Ahmed Tinubu International Conference Centre, noting that regulatory consistency is now critical to investor confidence and national energy security.

Umar said, “We are resolved to superintend the industry with higher standards of transparency, equity, accountability, consistency and predictability,” Umar said during the panel “Scaling Downstream Capacity – Optimising Africa’s Oil Value.”

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He cited three seismic changes reshaping Nigeria’s oil and gas landscape since 2021: petroleum products price deregulation, the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) 2021, and Nigeria’s pivot from an import-dependent market to a net exporter following the operationalization of the Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals Company Limited (DPRP).

Building buffers amid global volatility: Umar noted that recent geopolitical shocks, including the Middle East war and the temporary closure of the Hormuz energy waterway, have exposed the risks of supply volatility.

In response, he said the Authority is placing a stronger focus on building Nigeria’s national strategic petroleum reserves to serve as a supply buffer during future crises.

“Every effort has to be made to ensure our national energy security,” he added.

Gas as the bridge to transition: A key part of that security plan, Umar said, is deepening domestic gas utilization through the soon-to-be-commissioned AKK gas pipeline. The project is designed to move gas from Nigeria’s southern production hubs to the north.

The pipeline, he said, will support Nigeria’s energy transition to cleaner fuels and help boost power generation to meet rising national demand.

“Gas is central to both our energy security and our transition agenda,” Umar stated.

Continental push for collaboration: The opening ceremony drew both Ministers of Petroleum, senior government officials, industry regulators, chief executives, investors, development partners and energy stakeholders from across Africa.

Their presence, organizers said, reaffirmed the continent’s commitment to collaboration and to driving sustainable growth across the energy value chain.

The NOG Energy Week 2026 runs this week in Abuja, with policy, investment and infrastructure expected to dominate discussions as Africa positions gas as its transition fuel.