Indian Oil Corporation has planned to set up a greenfield refinery in Nigeria and also bid for equity participation in one of the state-run refineries, as part of wider plans to secure a veritable source of energy supply. The proposed refinery would be one of the four grass root refineries of 200,000 barrels per day capacity, in order to increase processing of domestic crude oil to 70 per cent from 40 per cent.

IOC has also shown interest in LNG projects and the Nigerian government would like to involve the company in one of the consortium being formed for building LNG plants. The proposed investments in the LNG project are pegged at $2-$4 billion and the plant is scheduled to go on stream before 2010.

Nigeria is also seeking investments from Indian firms in exploration and invited companies like OIL India and Gail India to participate in the bidding for some oil blocks that will come up in February.

Nigeria is considering increasing the term contract to sell crude oil to IOC to 3 million tonnes per annum from the current 2 million tonnes. Previously, it had allocated two blocks to ONGC-Mittal Energy on a nomination basis and may extend the same dispensation to either IOC or OIL.

Also See:

IOC offers two proven oil fields by Nigeria (17-Jan-07)