By Uche Mbah
Nigeria is said to have resumed fuel importation from China in the wake of the criticisms that the Oil Producing and exporting country is poised to start importation of downstream petroleum products from Niger.
Nigeria is Africa’s biggest producer of crude oil and a major Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC member.
Currently, the refineries in Nigeria are not working, and where they work, run on losses.
Reports indicate that China shipped 37,000 metric tonnes of refined products to Nigeria last September, and has been doing so since July 2019, according to S&P Global Platts.
Nigeria has then followed countries like Togo, which imported 50, 000 metric tonnes. Between April and July 2020, Nigeria imported 50, 000 metric tonnes of PMS. Besides Nigeria and Togo, South Africa and Kenya are also beneficiaries of Chinese importation. Kenya and South Africa are receiving 40,000 mt and 35,000 mt, respectively.
China has been making frantic efforts to make an incursion into African economies through fuel supplies and provision of loans with complicated conditionalities.
To meet up demands, China increased its crude imports to 10.1 million barrels per day, United States Energy Information Administration, EIA states. This was a 0.9 million barrel per day increase in 2019. Last year, their refining capacity increased by one million barrels per day. This was because, due to increased demand, they built two new refineries, which came on stream recently.
But in Nigeria, there have been reports that refineries are incurring overheads without producing a single drop of oil. Besides, the renewed threat of hostilities in the Niger Delta region indicates that it is not yet Uhuru for Nigeria to take the bull by the horn and refine its own crude.
