The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited has announced a new deadline of June 2026 for selecting technical partners to assist in the rehabilitation and management of Nigeria’s three government-owned refineries, following numerous delays and a significant decline in internal refining expertise.

During a press conference in Abuja on Monday, where NNPCL revealed a record Profit After Tax of ₦5.4 trillion for the 2024 fiscal year—its highest to date—Group Chief Executive Officer Bayo Ojulari shared the revised timeline during the Q&A segment.

Ojulari recognized that the Port Harcourt, Warri, and Kaduna refineries, despite ongoing rehabilitation efforts, still operate “well below international standards,” making their products commercially uncompetitive, especially in comparison to the privately-owned Dangote Refinery.

To address decades of deterioration, he emphasized that the company will now collaborate exclusively with established private operators who already own and effectively manage refineries globally.

He further mentioned that these partnerships will be strictly commercial, based on proven success rather than political or governmental influences.

“Everything necessary will be arranged. Thus, I will have a clear pathway towards completing those refineries. Allow me to point out a couple more aspects that might not be widely known. If we follow the original plan, let's just say we proceed, by the time we finish the current rehabilitation, the products from those refineries will still fall significantly short of the Dangote refinery standards, and will be considerably below current international specifications.

“So when we refer to a hybrid approach, it means we want to redesign it to become hybrid, so that the products we yield will meet international standards, allowing us to market them commercially, right? That will involve some redesign work. We don't wish to preemptively provide a specific date for this, but we anticipate being able to do that more reliably sometime in Q2 next year.”

Ojulari also noted that NNPCL will only announce definitive completion dates once the detailed redesigns and hybrid upgrades necessary to elevate the refineries to global standards have been finalized and approved.

The June 2026 deadline for choosing partners marks another step in a lengthy effort to revitalize Nigeria’s three state-owned refineries—Port Harcourt (210,000 bpd), Warri (125,000 bpd), and Kaduna (110,000 bpd)—which collectively have a nameplate capacity of 445,000 barrels per day but have been nearly inactive for the majority of the past 15 years.

Since the early 2000s, various administrations have invested an estimated ₦18 trillion (including forex components) on repeated cycles of Turnaround Maintenance and rehabilitation contracts; however, none of the refineries has achieved consistent production.

The Port Harcourt Refinery is currently undergoing a rehabilitation valued at $1.5 billion, managed by Tecnimont; Warri Refinery is being refurbished through a partnership with South Korea’s Daewoo Engineering & Construction; and the Kaduna Refinery, the most deteriorated of the three, requires an extensive overhaul and reconfiguration to effectively process a broader variety of crude grades.

The significant disparity with the 650,000 bpd Dangote Refinery, which is already producing Euro-V specification petrol, diesel, and jet fuel, has highlighted how far behind the state-owned facilities have fallen in terms of both technology and operational efficiency, intensifying the urgency to find credible, experienced private operators.