An ultra-modern 300 million-litre capacity tank farm has been built by a local private investor, Petrolex, at Ibefun, Ogun State, Southwest Nigeria.
The project was commissioned by Nigeria’s Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who said the tank farm would go a long way to ease petroleum products distribution bottlenecks in parts of the country.
The Vice President, added that the federal government considered industrialization as key to sustainable growth and development of the country, with its attendant promise of creating massive employment opportunities for teeming Nigerian youths.
Speaking at the commissioning, Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, described the the tank farm as a collective dream of all Nigerians towards securing the country’s energy future, while the NNPC Chief, Dr. Maikanti Baru, assured that the Corporation would continue to offer unflinching support to indigenous private investors in the nation’s oil and gas Industry.
“NNPC has taken the lead in supporting local players in both the upstream and downstream sub-sector of the petroleum Industry. We are therefore willing to support Petrolex in whatever way we can,” Dr. Baru stated.
He observed that in the wake of Nigeria’s growing population over the years, there arose the need for a more sophisticated supply chain infrastructure capable of delivering energy products more effectively and efficiently.
The Chairman/CEO of Petrolex, Mr. Segun Adebutu, said the project would provide over 10,000 new jobs; improve the throughput capacity for distribution of petroleum products by over 500percent and decongest the Apapa and Ibafo traffic often occasioned by petroleum products tankers by about 60percent.
The facility has 30 loading gantries, 4,000 truck capacity park, 30,000 metric tonnes vessel, 16 barges and 8 tugboats. The project also aims at delivering 350 petrol stations, 1.2bn litres capacity storage, a lube blending plant, a gas processing facility and a petrochemical plant by 2020.