… take over Port Harcourt Refinery
Oando Plc, plans to raise additional capital which will support the company’s recovery strategy. Addressing stockbrokers, investors and financial journalist at the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) during its facts behind the figures in Lagos.
Oando management, led by Adewale Tinubu, the group managing director, said they are targeting strategic investors for the fresh capital which will be N40 billion. He assured investors: “Please be assured that our company is safe and is healthy, he said they are weighing options like discussions with strategic or portfolio investors on the kind of capital injection, whether it would be a convertible loan.
Oando added that they have entered into an agreement with the Federal Government to repair, operate and maintain the brown-field Port Harcourt Refinery in Rivers State, with the target of taking it from 30 percent capacity utilization, first to 100 percent and then 120 percent. With the cash-flow generated from this venture, he said, the group hopes to build a green-field 100 barrels per day capacity refinery within the complex.
The refinery operations, he said, would be in partnership with Italian oil giant- Agip, with Oando’s job being to pre-finance the project, after which “anybody can bring their crude, we would refine.” Tinubu described 2016 as a challenging one, when there was a production decline, added to low oil price and foreign exchange volatility in Nigeria, all of which impacted negatively on the numbers.
