The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited has announced a fresh target of June 2026 to finalise the selection of technical partners for the country’s state-owned refineries, following years of failed rehabilitation efforts and a sharp decline in refining expertise.

The Group Chief Executive Officer of NNPCL, Bayo Ojulari, disclosed this during a question-and-answer session at a press briefing on Monday in Abuja, where the company announced a Profit After Tax of N5.4tn for the 2024 financial year, the strongest in its corporate history.

Ojulari said Nigeria’s refineries, the Port Harcourt, Warri, and Kaduna plants, despite ongoing rehabilitation, remain “well below international standards,” making their products commercially uncompetitive, especially compared to the privately owned Dangote Refinery.

He, however, explained that the current management is seeking competent private partners with proven refinery management experience to support the revival of Nigeria’s state-owned refineries.

According to him, the new strategy is to work only with private entities that already own and operate functioning refineries, stressing that the partnerships would be based strictly on verifiable track records and structured as business collaborations.

He stressed that any collaboration would be business‑driven, based on solid track records and structured as commercial (not state‑driven) arrangements. Citing the Dangote Refinery as an example of how technical capacity has shifted abroad, he noted that many of the experts currently running such facilities are foreign because Nigeria has “lost capability over time.”

The NNPCL boss explained that years of underinvestment, weak governance, and collapsing technical capacity had left Nigeria unable to operate the refineries to global standards.

He said, “Now, going forward, what are we really looking for? We realise that, you know, if you look at Dangote Refinery and look at the capabilities of the people running it, a lot of foreign people are there. We may not like it, but we need to review that capability, because we have lost the capability over time in terms of the overall capacity to run.

“So what we are looking at is some partnership with a private entity, just like you said, but private entities that have existing refineries that they are running and operating. So it’s not by mouth, right? So they would have that track record. And our intention is to partner with them as a business. Remember, we are not partnering as a government.

“We are partnering as a CAMA company. It’s very different. It’s a commercial arrangement where they bring in technical capacity, technical resources, and all of that, and we complement with the capability that we have, and we cooperate with them. But they lead the operation, because we want people who are in the game, So that’s what the intention is.”

He added that NNPCL may redesign its refineries into hybrid plants to meet global product specifications and compete internationally. However, firm completion dates will only be announced after redesign and hybridisation plans are finalised. Ojulari said NNPCL expects a clearer timetable by mid-2026.

He further warned that if the original rehabilitation plan for the state-owned refineries is followed, the output would still fall “two steps below current international specifications.”

“You talked about the timeline. I think the timeline is a bit challenging to say, but I will just tell you that sometime in the middle of next year, I will be in a better position to give a firmer timeline. But the timeline I can give you is that by the middle of next year, we will have agreed and defined the partnerships, the technical partnerships, the new relationship, and the new contracts.

“Everything will be in place. So I will have a clear roadmap towards the completion of those refineries. Let me give you two more things that most people may not be aware of. If we go by the original plan, let’s just assume we go ahead, right? By the time we finish the ongoing rehabilitation, the products from those refineries will be far lower standard than the Dangote refinery, and will be two steps lower standard than the current international specifications.

“So when you use the word hybrid, right, is that we want to redesign to a hybrid, so that the product that we produce will be of international standard, so that we can commercially market it, right? That requires some redesign. So we don’t want to preempt by just giving you a date just for it, but we know that we should be able to do that more credibly sometime in Q2 next year.”

He said the company would only release firm completion dates after finalising the redesigns and hybridisation plans necessary to meet global refining standards. The new timeline continues the government’s long-standing efforts to revive Nigeria’s ailing refineries.

The country’s three state-owned plants, Port Harcourt, Warri, and Kaduna, with a combined installed capacity of 445,000 barrels per day, have been largely moribund for over a decade, producing little to no output in most years despite billions spent on turnaround maintenance and rehabilitation projects.

Despite billions of dollars totalling around N18tn committed to Turnaround Maintenance since the early 2000s, none of the refineries has returned to steady production. The Port Harcourt plant is undergoing a $1.5bn rehabilitation, Warri is being revamped under a joint programme with Daewoo Engineering, while Kaduna refinery requires an extensive overhaul and new configurations to handle more complex crude.

The emergence of Dangote Refinery, now producing Euro-V standard fuels, has further exposed the outdated configuration and technological gap of the state-owned plants.

Beyond refining, Ojulari said NNPCL is working with partners to lift Nigeria’s crude oil output to 1.7 million barrels per day by year’s end, supported by improved security, better Joint Ventures financing, and new upstream investments.

He revealed that Nigeria’s oil production is on a gradual upward trajectory, noting that output last year was around 1.5 million barrels per day. This year, the target is to reach about 1.7 million barrels per day, with expectations to hit 1.8 million barrels next year.

He added that, with ongoing investments in the sector, the government remains confident of achieving its ambitious goal of two million barrels per day by 2027, emphasizing that the approach involves taking all necessary steps to ensure the target is met.

He said the company’s strong financial outlook, including the N5.4tn profit declared for 2025, reflects improved operational fundamentals.

“We will have a better financial year in 2025 compared to 2024 on the basis of our fundamental performance,” he said. “If you exclude foreign exchange gains and price effects, our fundamentals show that 2025 will outperform 2024.”

Ojulari emphasised repeatedly that NNPCL now operates as a limited liability company under the Companies and Allied Matters Act, with greater commercial freedom under the Petroleum Industry Act.

“We must correct a misconception. NNPC is now largely a private company. Yes, we have government oversight and national accountability under the PIA, but we are not operating as a government parastatal,” he said. “The PIA created an environment where NNPC is able to consummate commercial agreements like never before.”

The GCEO said NNPCL’s long-term strategy hinges on improving partnerships and boosting investor confidence. “The partner you have today is your best ambassador. If partners are unhappy, they damage your reputation,” he said. “We are improving the quality of partnerships across the board, and we are already seeing new investment opportunities emerge.”

He added that governance reforms, transparency initiatives, and staff development would remain central to the company’s ambition to become “one of the most competitive companies on the continent.”

Ojulari praised the over 6,000 direct and 6,000 indirect staff of NNPCL for driving the company’s turnaround, saying the organisation was investing heavily in new technical skills to keep pace with fast-changing energy technologies.

“It’s our people that do the work. We are unleashing their full potential by giving them the tools, training, and autonomy they need to take us into the future,” he said.