If the meeting that happened between Mr Mele Kyari the Group Chief Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tajudeen Abass is to be taken to heart, every petroleum product you can think of will experience a sharp drop in price by 2024.

This outcome is to be expected because three state-run refineries will have completed their rehabilitation by the end of the coming year.

The NNPCL is already on a path to achieving this based on what Mr Kyari confirmed on Thursday, 23 November while with the speaker and other execs who made the National Assembly Complex quorum in a conversation focused on positioning these refineries for challenging times.

Addressing the gathering, he shared “that by the end of December this year” his company “will start the Port Harcourt refinery”, and by “early in the first quarter of 2024, we will start the Warri refinery and by the end of 2024, Kaduna refinery will come into operation” which will then mean altogether an increase in output both for exports and local consumption.

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By the coming year, says the group chief officer, “many of the initiatives including the rehabilitation of our refineries and also the efforts of small-scale refineries, and the upcoming Dangote refinery, will make Nigeria a net exporter of petroleum products in 2024.”

And when all these finally happen, it would mean a totally different outlook, particularly after a very strenuous petrol subsidy removal. The halting of subsidy payments by President Bola Tinubu in his May inaugural speech might soon lose its pinching impact because “We will no longer be talking about fuel importation by the end of 2024” according to Mr Kyari who has shown optimism about things crystallising with time.

That optimism appears to be spreading really quickly to the President of the Petroleum Products Retail Outlets Owners Association of Nigeria (PETROAN), Billy Gillis-Harry in a Punch News chat. There is no doubt according to him that Port Harcourt will resume back to processing crude oil by year-end.

He told Punch that he “can confirm to you that the refinery is getting set for production.”

How the difference will be felt according to the association president “is simple – there are so many inputs that are going to be removed from PMS cost, such as cost of importation, ports rate, and shipping. From here, you can load products and move them to far locations in Nigeria.

“So all we need to do is just to ensure equitable distribution of what is being produced. Therefore once the refinery starts pumping out products it will save forex for the Federal Government.”

Ayodele Johnson

Ayodelé is a Lagos-based journalist and the Content and Editorial Coordinator at Meiza. All around the megacity, I am steering diverse lifestyle magazine audiences with ingenious hacks and insights that spur fast, informed decisions in their busy lives.