NNPC refineries accumulate ₦8.5 trillion internal debts
NNPC has revealed a staggering ₦8.5 trillion in related-party liabilities linked to its idle refineries as of December 2024.
These debts stem mainly from the three shut-down refineries — Port‑Harcourt Refining Company Limited, Kaduna Refining and Petrochemical Company Limited and Warri Refining and Petrochemical Company Limited — with Port Harcourt alone owing about ₦4.2 trillion.
The debt has surged roughly 35 per cent year-on-year from the ₦6.3 trillion recorded at the end of 2023.
This financial burden reflects decades of failed attempts to rehabilitate these refineries — despite huge expenditure, the plants remain largely non-operational, forcing Nigeria to rely heavily on imported fuel.
Facing the unsustainable cost and the persistent underperformance of these state-owned refineries, NNPC is now exploring alternative models. NNPC is actively seeking technical equity partners to take over operations, maintain the facilities, and restore refining capacity. However, the current debt profile illustrates how costly the prolonged downtime has been — both for the company and for the wider economy.
Even with combined installed capacity of 445,000 barrels per day among the refineries, they remain largely idle.
In response to the persistent dysfunction.
Whether these proposed reforms will restore functionality and stem the financial hemorrhage remains to be seen — but the ₦8.5 trillion liability serves as a sobering reminder of how deeply embedded inefficiencies in the refining sector have become.
Decades of under-performance and mismanagement have not only eroded state assets — they have created a fiscal drag that could undermine future efforts to stabilize Nigeria’s downstream petroleum sector.
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