Ogun illegal refinery has 90,000-litre underground tank in Ogun
By Omolade Adegbuyi
The illegal refinery discovered in Ogun State has 90,000litres capacity tank, Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) has said.
Both the NMDPRA and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC ) have sealed the Chinese-linked illegal refinery.
The illicit cartel was recently discovered at Ogere Remo in Ikenne Local Government Area of Ogun State.
The refinery is said to supply local and international consumers especially in neighboring Togo and Benin Republic raking in millions of profit.
During a joint inspection of the facility by the NMDPRA and EFCC this week officials stated that the illegal refinery was operating on over three hectares of land, with an underground storage tank estimated to have a capacity of more than 90,000 litres.
State coordinator of NMDPRA, Atilola Akinyemi
said the facility is very crude and completely illegal, noting it doesn’t meet the standard of a real refinery.
“This facility does not have a permit from any regulatory authority, and its operations are unknown to the relevant authorities, which can be likened to the illegal refining activities that were prevalent in the Niger Delta during the 1990s and early 2000s,” Akinyemi said.
He explained that the facility had underground storage tanks with an estimated capacity of over 90,000 litres, locally fabricated tanks, separation silos, underground heating systems and hydrants used for cooling.
“We have seen locally fabricated storage tanks, silos for separation, and other equipment. Everything about the setup suggests that they attempted to replicate the operations of a standard refinery but failed to meet the required standards,” Akinyemi said.
He added that the operators appeared to have technical knowledge and had designed the facility to imitate a standard refinery while bypassing established regulations.
“It is clear that the people behind this operation are not ordinary individuals. They appear to be technically skilled people who have deliberately designed this facility to circumvent government regulations and operate outside the established regulatory framework.
Akinyemi, however, cautioned against describing the recovered products as diesel, also known as Automotive Gas Oil, saying laboratory tests were necessary to determine their actual composition.
On October 31, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC ) uncovered a clandestine refinery in the Ogere area of Ogun State, allegedly operated by Chinese nationals, where underground tanks suspected to have been used for processing sludge oil were discovered.
The commission said preliminary investigations indicated that the operators sourced sludge oil from Warri, Delta State, and Port Harcourt, Rivers State, for processing.
The federal government recently blamed crude oil theft, pipeline vandalism, and infrastructure deficits for Nigeria’s failure to meet its first-quarter 2026 oil revenue target, limiting the country’s ability to capitalise on higher international oil prices.
