By Adewale Sanyaolu

GUIDELINES for the es­tablishment of hydrocarbon processing plants (petro­leum refinery and petro­chemicals plants) in Nigeria

1.2 Application

Applications for approval to establish a refinery or any other hydrocarbon pro­cessing plant shall be made in the manner described in section 1.3 below and in the form schedule in Appendix 1.

1.3 Approval process for the design, construction, commissioning and opera­tion of a process plant

The approval process is designed to ensure that ap­plicant for approval and permit to establish a Petro­leum Refinery (or a process plant), understands the industry, the technical and economic implications of the project, the sociological and environmental impact of the plant, and mainte­nance provisions required to protect the health of the operating staff and safety of plant. It is designed to prevent avoidable waste of resources by ensuring at each stage that the applicant understands the statutory requirements of each phase of the project.

Consequently, the ap­proval shall be given in three sequential stages: License to Establish (LTE), Approval to Construct (ATC) and Li­cense to Operate (LTO) re­spectively.

Note that requirement in sections “2.1.1 item IV, 3.4 item 2(iV), 6.3, Appendix I post-script item (iii)” re­garding payment of “refund­able commitment deposit of $1 million per 10,000 BPSD capacity” of this guideline are no longer applicable ef­fective 2009.

Section II

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2.1. License to Establish

This approval stage is to confirm general feasibil­ity of the proposed proj­ect, market plan, products specifications, site selection, proposed crude oil (or feed­stock) supply plan and prod­uct evacuation plan, prelimi­nary safety and environmen­tal impact statement, and organizational plans. The following submissions shall be made to the Department of Petroleum Resources to facilitate the corresponding milestone approvals as item­ized in sections 2.1.1 to 2.1.4:

2.1.1. Application and Statutory Payments for all licenses and approvals

  1. i) Submission of applica­tion for licenses to establish a private refinery as stipu­lated in Appendix l
  2. ii) Payment of statutory application fee of fifty thou­sand US dollars only (US $50,000) for LTE,

Plant Relocations and ATC Revalidation or one hundred thousand dollars only (US $100,000) for li­cense to operate (LTO) in bank draft in favour of Fed­eral Government of Nigeria ‘DPR Fees Accounts’ and

iii) Payment of N500,000 Service charge in bank draft in favour of the ‘Department of Petroleum Resources’

  1. iv) Payment of refundable deposit of One million dol­lars only (US $1,000,000) for every 10,000 bpsd refin­ery capacity for LTE, Plant Relocations and ATC Revali­dation.

Refund is subject to ad­herence to agreed project execution schedule within the first eighteen months and achievement of 70% front end engineering de­sign (FEED) before expira­tion of the license otherwise the sum deposited is forfeit­ed to the Federal Govern­ment.

To be continued

 

  • Source: DPR