Waltersmith has executed a $35m debt facility with the Africa Finance Corporation to finance its 5, 000 bopd refinery. The ceremony took place at the Intercontinental Hotel in Lagos.
The Senior Investment Director, Mr Taiwo Adeniji signed the agreement on behalf of AFC while Mr Isa, signed on behalf of Waltersmith.
According to Mr Adeniji, “we know that Nigeria spends an enormous amount of foreign currency in importing petroleum products and companies such as Waltersmith who are making an effort to reverse this trend of using our currency to import refined petroleum products deserve all our support and that is exactly what AFC is doing by supporting the development of this project. We have found Waltersmith a very credible company that deserves our support and we sincerely believe that this particular project would be the first phase of many more he added.
On his part, Mr Isa stated that the investment by Waltersmith, AFC and Nigerian content development and monitoring board (NCDMB) into this refinery project is clearly strategic and surely cannot come at a better time.
“We have been plagued by the frequent unrest in the Niger Delta area, which has hampered our production for a cumulative period of 747 days. This is equivalent to two years out of out 10 years of operational existence beginning in March 2008. Our investment has therefore become imperative to enable continuous production from our upstream business all year round without interruptions arising from vandalisation of crude oil pipelines”.
AFC in addition to providing the $35m debt also contributed immensely to the strengthening of the Risk Management Framework of the overall project.
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