Waltersmith Refining and Petrochemical Company Limited said its modular refinery at Ohaji-Egbema in Imo State has completed an expansion that raises capacity from 5,000 barrels per day to 10,000 barrels per day, and the plant is now operational producing AGO, Household Kerosine, HFO and Naphtha.
The claim landed on Thursday during a visit to the site by Felix Omatsola Ogbe, executive secretary of the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board, and Saidu Mohammed, the chief executive of the Nigerian Midstream Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority. Waltersmith said the refinery has supplied over 1.1 billion litres of refined products to local and regional markets, with most product deliveries serving the South‑East and South‑South of Nigeria and HFO reaching the West African sub‑region.
The numbers underline what Waltersmith presented as a shift from a small modular plant to a functioning local supplier with regional reach. The company said it completed the initial phase that was commissioned in November 2020 and has now doubled throughput, while also outlining two further phases: a 30,000 barrels per day condensate refinery and an industrial park designed to accommodate other gas‑based firms.
Waltersmith said those integrated expansions will take feedstock from the Ibigwe and Assa fields and nearby fields, and include a gas line capable of delivering 100 million standard cubic feet of gas per day plus embedded captive power intended to attract industries to co‑locate in the industrial park. On timing for the large condensate project, Mr Abdulrazak Isa said: "Plans are afoot to conclude the partnership agreement for the condensate refinery by the 4th quarter of 2026".
Those plans were given a public push during the site visit. Saidu Mohammed framed the effort in national terms, saying "the midstream sector of the petroleum industry holds the key to the nation’s economic development" and praised Waltersmith, saying he "described Waltersmith as an octopus in the midstream sector" — an image meant to capture the company's expanding footprint across refining, gas and downstream services.
Context for the expansion reaches back to 2018, when the NCDMB invested equity in Waltersmith's modular refinery. The first phase went into service in November 2020; the company says the new output and the integrated projects will rely on local hydrocarbon fields to feed the larger facilities it plans to build.
But the timeline for scaling up contains a clear point of friction. Waltersmith's roadmap depends on steady access to feedstock from nearby fields even as the landscape of asset ownership in the region has shifted — Renaissance Africa Energy Ltd acquired the entire assets of Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria in March 2025. That change in ownership does not appear in Waltersmith's statement, but it is a fact that will matter for any company arranging long‑term condensate supply and farm‑down agreements.
The immediate consequence is twofold: Waltersmith has doubled local refining capacity and is selling product across several Nigerian regions and into West Africa, while the company must still secure partnership agreements and feedstock commitments to move from a 10,000 bpd modular operation to the planned multi‑phase industrial hub. If Waltersmith concludes the partnership by the fourth quarter of 2026, as Abdulrazak Isa outlined, the project timetable will be aggressive and will require synchronized agreements on condensate supply, gas delivery and on‑site power arrangements.
For now the refinery is a working proof of concept — a locally capitalized modular plant that has ramped output and supplied more than a billion litres since commissioning — and the real question is whether those operational gains can be converted into a larger midstream cluster built around the 30,000 bpd condensate refinery, the industrial park and the 100 million scf/d gas line Waltersmith describes. The visitors on Thursday framed that broader ambition as central to economic development; the next 18 months will show whether the partnerships and feedstock deals fall into place.
