By Ogar Monday
The Cross River State Commissioner for Petroleum Resources, Hon. Itaya Nyong has stated that the State is on the verge of having a modular refinery that will kick off within the next 2 years as plans for the refinery have reached advanced stage.
The Commissioner who made this known while speaking with CrossRiverWatch recently in his office said the State was not resting on its oars to explore all its abundant resources in the petroleum sector.
According to him, “A modular refinery takes about 18 months to build because it comes completely assembled, completely knocked down. So it is just for us to work for the licensing, and another problem is the siting. We are looking for where to site it. Investors have already been confirmed; it is a project that maximum 2 years will kick off.”
The Commissioner further stated that his Ministry is considering partnering with foreign investors who have experience and will assist the State in the establishment of more refineries and that a particular company from Spain has proposed the establishment of 200, 000 barrel per day refinery in the State and that there are many other investors “falling over themselves especially with the Federal Government commitment to help the Niger Delta States in that aspect.”
On the downstream, the Commissioner stated that the State is looking at the establishment of tank farms, jetties and mega stations across the State, so that “Cross Riverians can have access to any petroleum product 24 hours and we plan that as we move on our petroleum products become cheaper than that of NNPC.”
The Commissioner added that his Ministry was created to “harness the abundant activities in the petroleum sub-sector from the upstream, middle stream and downstream in Cross River and being also conscious of the fact that the State is home to one of the smallest but most effective depots in the country, which has well over 40 tank farms, we have well over 2000 retail outlets in the State with several unexplored hydro carbon deposits.”
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