Business
Experts List Investors’ Challenges On Building Of Refineries
If stakeholders’ submissions are anything to go by, then, the dream of the nation to increase its domestic petroleum products refining from 445,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 1,429,000 bpd may not see the light of the day.
The experts, who spoke to The Tide in Opobo Town over the weekend in separate chats, said unless issues bedeviling case of doing busines in the oil-rich Niger Delta region, and a clear cut fiscal regime are tackled, no investor will be moved to commit resources into building of refineries in Nigeria.
A petroleum expert and Managing Director of Enigma-Petro-Data Investment Company Limited, Dr. Endwell Minimah, said that Inteernational Oil Companies (IOCs), operating in the country must stop the treatment of Nigerian’s citizens like trading animals and their land as rejected colony, rather they should invest in the energy sector to retain access to the nation’s resources.
Some of the world’s largest independent oil traders, Minimah stressed, benefited for years from exporting Nigeria’s crude and in turns sell the refined petroleum products to the country without putting money into developing the sector.He emphasised that “if you have been selling to me (refined) products for eight years and you cannot put a foothold in Nigeria, then I should not be buying products from you”.
On the failed efforts to involve private sector, he maintained that in 2002, 18 License to Establish (LTE), were offered investors to build refineries by the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) but, of today, only one of them have come on stream with just 1,000 barrels (bpd) capacity. The petroleum scientist maintained that, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) refineries in Warri, Kaduna and two in Port Harcourt, have an installed capacity of 445,000 barrels per day (bpd), stressing that more worrisome is the fact that despite efforts to increase local refining capacity to conserve foreign exchange, Nigeria’s three refineries could only produce less than 43,743,273 million liters of fuel last month as against the nation’s daily consumption of over 40 million liters.
He said that, the country request for foreign exchange for imports of petroleum products, which currently stands at 45 percent will increase in the coming months unless something drastic is done about the spate of the refineries.
Minimah stressed further that, though the Corporation had hinted of arrangement to ramp up production from the 445,000 bpd to 1,429,000, the plan is yet to come to fruition as refineries are now operating at less than 40 capacities.
According to DPR, he said, the increase in refining capacity is to be achieved from the licensing of 25 private refineries by the Agency.
In his view, Dr Charlton Reuben Pepple, said Shell Petroleum Development Company Nigeria Limited (SPDC) cannot build a refinery in Nigeria due to the fact that there are surplus refineries across the globe, adding that refineries were no longer profitable, hence the decision of some firms to invest in the gas sector as alternative.
He said that with respect to downstream, Shell is divesting from refineries all over the world because there is ~us of refineries; Shell no longer own refineries even in the United Kingdom.
Pepple, who is the Managing Director of Afik Petro-Base Engineering Limited, Lagos, explained “that while most of the IOCs are already overburdened with the huge cost involved in operating in the upstream sector of Nigeria, question have been raised as to the economic sensibility of investing in the downstream sector.
Bethel Sam Toby
Cornerstone of Financial Services
A survey of more than 1 000 global finance leaders undertaken by digital payment network Ripple shows that 72% of respondents believe they need to offer a digital asset solution to remain competitive.
According to Ripple, leaders from the banking, fintech, corporate and asset management sector have made it clear that the “digital asset revolution is happening now”.
“Digital assets are quickly becoming a cornerstone of financial services, underpinned by progressive regulation, growing interest from Tier-1 banks, a steady consumer shift from banks to fintech providers, and booming stablecoin adoption,” Ripple says.
The survey was conducted in early 2026 and the findings released in March.
Stablecoin Boon or Bane?
Ripple has experienced significant success in the stablecoin sector since launching its Ripple USD (RLUSD) stablecoin in 2024.
With a market cap of $1.56 billion, it is considered a major regulated player in the market.
No doubt the platform was pleased to learn through its own survey that financial leaders were most bullish about stablecoins.
Roughly three-quarters of respondents believed they could boost cash-flow efficiency and unlock trapped working capital.
Ripple noted that finance leaders were thinking about stablecoins as more than “just a new way to execute payments”; instead, they viewed them as effective tools for treasury management.
In March 2026, Ripple began testing a new trade finance model built around RLUSD in a bid to increase the speed of cross-border payments.
The pilot initiative, developed alongside supply chain finance company Unloq [https://unloq.com], is running on the XRP Ledger inside a testing framework developed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
The Asian city-state is one of the platform’s biggest growth markets.
The idea behind the project is to see whether stablecoin-based settlement can streamline trade finance, too often hampered by reliance on intermediaries and slow reconciliation.
The only potential drawback is that if the initiative takes off, the Ripple to USD price could be negatively affected.
Ripple has always championed its native XRP token as a bridge asset, the “middleman” in the process of a financial institution turning dollars in the US into pounds in the UK, for example.
Ripple converts dollars into XRP and then back into pounds.
If RLUSD can do exactly the same thing, questions will be asked about XRP’s relevance.
That is a bridge Ripple will have to cross if it gets to that point.
Tokenisation Partners
Another interesting finding from Ripple’s survey is that most banks and asset managers are seeking tokenisation partners to help execute their strategies.
Some 89% of respondents said digital asset storage and custody were top priority. “Token servicing/lifecycle management also ranks highly for banks at 82%, while asset managers place greater emphasis on primary distribution at 80%,” Ripple found.
The survey also revealed that just more than half of fintechs and financial institutions want an infrastructure provider that can offer a “one-stop-shop solution”. This rose to 71% among corporate financial leaders.
Ripple attributes this to institutions and firms wanting uncomplicated, cohesive systems.
Infrastructure Rules
In its final analysis, Ripple says companies across the board are looking for partners and solutions that are “secure, compliant, battle-tested and that enable growth and execution”.
“The message is clear: infrastructure decisions made today will shape competitive positioning tomorrow.”
No surprise that this is precisely where Ripple is placing much of its focus.
