section_path: Economy/Oil refinery
section_name: Oil refinery
paragraph_text: Oil refinery
  
  For decades, there was no oil processing industry in Nigeria, apart from illegal refineries in the Niger Delta (which are very polluting due to the lack of cracking). Nigeria therefore had to have the end products of domestic crude oil such as fuels, bitumen, paraffin, motor oil, polypropylene etc. produced in US or European refineries, with transport costs over thousands of nautical miles and margins for middlemen. The oil refinery in Lekki went into operation in December 2023 and is expected to process 650,000 barrels of oil per day when fully operational, making it the seventh largest oil refinery in the world. By comparison, the largest refinery in the United Kingdom in Fawley processes 270,000 barrels a day, while the biggest US refinery in Port Arthur, Texas, processes 607,000 barrels a day. 57,000 people have been hired.