Nigeria, others to spend $201.3 billion on petrochemical industry

Global petrochemical industry is expected to spend around $201.3 billion by 2020 on different future projects.

According to a new report by BMI Research firm based in South Africa, released at the weekend, large capacity additions with more than 700 planned projects are expected to come online primarily in the China, US and Iran in the next five years.

Already, Dangote Group has invested over $20 billion into the construction of a refinery with a capacity of about 650,000 barrels of crude oil per day.

The investment is expected to cover gas pipeline infrastructure, power generation, petrochemical, fertilizer, sugar refinery and petroleum refinery in Nigeria.

The report noted that China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation, Janus Methanol AG and Petroliam Nasional Berhad are the top three companies by capacity additions expected to come on stream over the next five years.

It noted that the US, China and Russia are the top three countries by capital expenditure for projects by 2020.

The report expects global petrochemicals capacity to experience considerable growth in the next five years with increase from 1,457 million metric tonnes per annum (mmtpa) in 2015 to 1,735 mmtpa by 2020.

Nigeria refineries have been producing below installed capacity of over 450,000 barrels per day.

Specifically, for the month of November 2016, three of the nation’s refineries produced 178,107MT of finished petroleum products and 24,599MT of intermediate products out of 232,768MT of crude processed at a combined capacity utilisation of 12.78 per cent compared to 23.53 per cent combined capacity utilisation achieved in the month of October 2016.

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), which made this known in its current monthly financial report, said the adverse performance was due to crude pipeline vandalism in the Niger Delta region.

The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, said that Nigeria was on the pact of becoming an exporter of refined petrol and other petrochemical products within the next four years if plans to ramp up the country’s domestic refining capacity worked out well.

He noted that if the plans to co-locate new refinery investments within the country’s existing refinery complexes in Kaduna, Warri and Port Harcourt become successful, and the private refinery owned by the Dangote Group comes on stream, Nigeria will produce more petrol than she needs and then export the excess.

He explained that it would take at least three years to get the co-located refineries to begin production, adding that Dangote’s is expected to come on stream between 2019 and 2020.