The operators also revealed that despite the directive by President Bola Tinubu that the company should supply crude oil to Dangote Refinery and other Modular Refineries in the country in Naira denomination, the Edo Refinery was yet to get any from the relevant authorities.
Chatting with journalists in Benin City at the weekend, the company's representative, Segun Okeni, explained that the refinery, which requires 1,000 bpd stream crude can barely function at full installed capacity.
Despite the company having existing crude oil supply agreements with Seplat and ND Western since 2022, he claimed that bureaucratic bottlenecks had prevented the refinery from accessing the much-needed resource.
According to him, “On August 18, 2021, our team led by our chairman, met with the NNPC GCEO and its top management team to discuss our intention to buy crude oil from NNPC and we immediately wrote seeking crude supply.
“In July 2022, the representatives of NNPC visited our facility for site inspection and to confirm the mechanical completion of the Edo refinery. In September 2022, we were invited for a commercial negotiation meeting with the NNPC head of terms, after which we sent a follow-up letter identifying the oil fields from which we can offtake crude oil.
“In March 2022, we also wrote to the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, informing it of our refinery status, future projects and our challenges of lack of crude oil supply to our refinery.
“We had also written and had a meeting with the NNPC Exploration and Production Limited (NEPL) between November 2022 and March 2023, indicating our severe need for crude oil supply from oil fields where NEPL has equity stakes.”
He noted that despite the meetings, correspondences and communications with NNPC over the past three years on the issues of crude oil supply, nothing was done.
Speaking further, Okeni said, “ERPCL also has a Crude Oil Supply Agreement with ND Western to lift crude oil from the Ughelli Pumping Station (UPS) owned by NEPL and operated by Shoreline.
“We have held several meetings with Shoreline and Heritage Oil and indicated our readiness to make modifications needed to offtake crude oil from the UPS but no progress has been made till date.”
The representative of ERPCL therefore sought Kyari’s intervention to implement the Seplat-ERPCL agreement to enable Edo refinery to start lifting crude oil from Oil Mining License (OML).
Describing the past two years as frustrating for the establishment, he said: “If we local investors can’t get crude even as small as we are, how can foreign investors be encourage to invest in the country.
“ The total daily demand of all modular refineries is not up to 2 percent of the daily crude oil production. Our lifting from the pumping station will even reduce pipeline losses,” he added.
Okeni argued that the advantage of loading from NNPC pumping stations to the expert terminal was that it costs less because the cost of pipeline export terminal charges and loss will be saved.
He justified that, “If the smallest refinery is not getting crude, it will discourage investors in that area.”
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