An indigenous oil and gas company, ND Western Ltd., says it is getting ready to take the Final Investment Decision (FID) on its 10,000 barrels per day refinery in Uturogu, Delta State.

Mr. Eberechukwu Oji, the Managing Director, ND Western Ltd., made the disclosure while speaking with newsmen on the sidelines of the 2022 Nigeria Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibition on Wednesday in Abuja.

Oji said the Front End Engineering Design for the project which was a Joint Venture with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) had been completed.

“We’re getting ready for the FID. Now you have to understand that before you take FID on a project, a number of things need to be ready,” he said.

He said issues such as finance and off-takers of refined petroleum products must be addressed before the board approves the FID.

On gas development in Nigeria, Oji called on the Federal Government to work with the private sector in transforming Nigeria into an industrialized country through its abundant natural gas resources.

He said: “I think that we have the opportunity to do so with gas because gas has a lot of options around it and gas solves some of the problems that we spoke about in the panel.

“So today, crude oil pipelines get tapped into and get disrupted but the gas pipelines are not being tapped into just because of the nature of the gas.

“It does make sense that the government should invest to take gas to all the industrial hubs in Nigeria.

“The Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano (AKK) pipeline is an excellent gas project to take gas to the north, but if you think about it, there are already demand centers in the east for which the government needs to support putting gas pipelines toward that axis.

“It is absolutely important that for Nigeria to industrialize, we have to utilize the resources we have which is gas, and make it available to all the capital cities in the country.