PETROAN seeks offtake deal with Azikel Refinery

The association representing more than 9,000 Nigerian filling stations is negotiating to buy fuel directly from Eruani Azibapu’s refinery in Bayelsa State, which would hand the plant a guaranteed market before it has sold a litre.

Billy Gillis-Harry, national president of the Petroleum Products Retail Outlets Owners Association of Nigeria, brought a delegation to the site at Obunagha near Yenagoa on Tuesday, Sept. 29 to inspect it and open talks on an offtake agreement, meaning a contract to buy a producer’s output before it exists.

Eruani received them as president and chief executive of Azikel Group.

Each side needs something the other has. A committed buyer gives the refinery predictable demand and gives its lenders a reason to keep funding it. Retailers get fuel that does not arrive by ship, which means no exposure to freight costs, no waiting on cargoes and no scramble for the dollars that imports require.

Gillis-Harry said the association wants a dependable supply relationship that works commercially for the refinery and lets its members plan their businesses. Eruani said Azikel is ready to build relationships with retailers as the plant advances towards commercial operation.

Nothing is agreed yet. Both sides said the commercial, technical and operational terms still have to be settled, and the association described the visit as part of a broader effort to deal with Nigerian refiners rather than importers.

The plant they walked around has been coming for a very long time. Nigerian newspapers reported in 2017 that the refinery would begin operating the following year. It is now 2026 and it has still not started.

What it will eventually make is unusual. Azikel is built to process 25,000 barrels a day of condensate, a light liquid that comes out of gas wells and is easier to refine than crude, into petrol, kerosene, diesel and heavy fuel oil. Eruani describes it as the only plant in Africa designed to turn condensate into a full product range, and a redesign that raised its capacity also pushed the cost to about $1 billion.

It would also be a first for the region that produces Nigeria’s oil. The Niger Delta has no private refinery capable of making petrol and aviation fuel, which is why the area has spent decades watching crude leave and fuel come back.

Eruani built the group that owns it out of dredging. He was born in Ogbia in Bayelsa State to Chief Allwell Eruani, the Obanema of Emadike, and expanded Azikel into power generation, aviation, construction and engineering. The United States consulate in Lagos honoured him in August 2018 for business excellence and international partnership, and Bayelsa governor Douye Diri credited him in October 2024 with giving the state its first crude oil industry.

His rise ran alongside a president from his own town. Eruani grew the group through the years Goodluck Jonathan served as vice president and then president, and both men come from Ogbia.

Azikel says the refinery will employ more than 3,000 people directly once it runs.