Blooming Faith Petroleum Limited, an affiliate of Hong Kong-based Blooming Faith Global Holdings Limited, has finalized plans to work with the Nigerian government to construct and operate a 200, 000 bpd capacity refinery in Akwa Ibom.

This is coming after Nigeria’s Minister of State for Petroleum, Emmanuel Kachikwu, was in China some days ago to create investment awareness for the Nigerian economy.

According to the Chairman of Blooming Faith Petroleum Limited, Robert Yeung, the company’s interest in constructing a refinery was motivated by the discovery that Nigeria depends on the importation of refined products to meet its domestic needs.

“We became immediately interested for two basic reasons, firstly as a business entity we have identified the fact that there is a vacuum to be filled, hence there is market for our produce when we get started. This is so because the government of Nigeria will not import what it can access locally as being produced by refineries in-country. Secondly, because of our confidence in Nigeria as an investors destination of choice in Africa as we know that with a population of almost 200 million people we can never get it wrong with the country and its people,” he said.

Yeung added that the company has no interest in exporting refined products as its basic objective is to produce refined petroleum products “for the nigerian market, discussions are currently on-going with the NNPC and the Department of Petroleum Resources and we hope at the end we will get all necessary approvals as we are ready to commence immediately with one hundred percent funding capability.”

The company’s International Operations Director, John Erigwe, stated that the company was extremely interested and highly committed to investing in Nigeria’s economy.

“Our refinery if approved and completed would be second in size and output capacity in Nigeria second only to the ongoing Dangote refinery which we gathered would commence operations in 2019. Nigeria surely needs these types of investments to boost local production of refined products as it is unheard of to have a particular commodity in commercial quantity and be unable to maximize its usage for the benefit of its people,” he told the Independent.

Anita Fatunji