Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources, Khalid Al-Falih, announced the possibility of building an independent refinery in Nigeria.
The Saudi Minister hinted this at a meeting with the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Ibe Kachikwu, in Riyadh, capital of Saudi.
Dr. Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu is on an official visit to Saudi Arabia.
Nigeria’s petroleum ministry, on its Twitter feed, on Thursday said Kachikwu and Aramco officials including its president discussed “areas of shared investment interests and existing viable investment options in the midstream and downstream sector”.
In another tweet, it said Kachikwu held discussions with Saudi Arabia’s energy minister to “cement the budding interest to support Nigeria’s infrastructure development in the oil sector”.
Dr. Ibe Kachikwu had on Tuesday met with Al-Falih and other top executives of Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil and Gas Company by revenue, with discussions bordering on collaborations between both nations in the oil and gas sector.
The Saudi-based energy conglomerate is expanding its downstream operations including refining and petrochemicals production and sees Nigeria as a gateway to other African countries.
Dr Kachikwu said Nigeria was looking towards Saudi Arabia because of the country’s successes in the oil and gas sector noting that Nigeria is already setting up a team to make the plans come to fruition.
Nigeria’s Minister of Petroleum, “We want to leverage on the huge success of Saudi government in terms of petroleum. Last year alone Saudi Aramco, an equivalent of NNPC made about $200 billion as profit.’’
“We have a lot of common ground, historical ties, and religious ties and there’s a need to move further.”
Dr Kachikwu had on Wednesday told Bloomberg that there are “very good prospects” for the federal government to sign deals with Saudi Arabia for investment in the nation’s four refineries.
According to him, “We are looking at cooperation along very multi levels. For example, we are asking for some investments into four of our refineries.’’
“We are looking at the potential for Liquefied Natural Gas investment. We are looking at some straight trade deals in terms of our DSDP programme, to see how they (Saudi Arabia) can participate and bring in products into the country.”
