President Bola Tinubu will inaugurate the $400m Otakikpo Onshore Crude Oil Export Terminal in Rivers State on October 8, the first new crude export facility to be built in Nigeria in over 50 years.
Green Energy International Limited, which operates the Otakikpo field in OML 11, Ikuru town, and the Andoni Local Government Area of Rivers State, created Nigeria’s first entirely indigenous onshore terminal. The Forcados Terminal, the last such facility, was opened in 1971.
The inauguration is scheduled to draw top government officials, including Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, Minister of State for Petroleum (Oil); Rivers State Governor Siminalayi Fubara; and important stakeholders from the oil and gas sector.
According to a statement signed by GEIL’s Executive Director of Legal and Corporate Services, Olusegun Ilori, on Thursday, the terminal is consistent with Tinubu’s efforts to increase crude oil output and address Nigeria’s long-standing evacuation issues.
“This project is a strategic infrastructure that supports the administration’s commitment to raising output while reducing costs,” Ilori said.
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Industry operators have frequently identified evacuation bottlenecks as a major impediment to attaining the Federal Government’s output objective of three million barrels per day.
The Otakikpo port is intended to provide a stable evacuation outlet for more than 40 stranded oil fields, potentially releasing millions of barrels of previously trapped crude.
With an initial storage capacity of 750,000 barrels, which can be expanded to three million barrels, and a loading capacity of 360,000 barrels per day, the facility is expected to dramatically cut production costs for Indigenous producers.
Professor Anthony Adegbulugbe, Chairman and CEO of GEIL, referred to the terminal as “game-changing national infrastructure.”
“What we have achieved here is not just a storage solution, but a pathway for about 40 stranded oil fields to finally contribute to the economy,” Adegbulugbe said.
