President Bola Ahmed Tinubu will on October 8, 2025, inaugurate the $400m Otakikpo Onshore Crude Oil Export Terminal in Rivers State.
Naijaonpoint understands that this will be Nigeria’s first new crude export facility in more than five decades.
The terminal, developed by Green Energy International Limited (GEIL), operators of the Otakikpo field in OML 11, Ikuru town, Andoni Local Government Area, is also the country’s first wholly indigenous onshore terminal.
The last facility of such scale, the Forcados Terminal, was commissioned in 1971.
According to GEIL’s Executive Director of Legal and Corporate Services, Olusegun Ilori, the project reflects Tinubu’s renewed drive to raise crude oil output and tackle Nigeria’s long-standing evacuation bottlenecks.
“This project is a strategic infrastructure that supports the administration’s commitment to raising output while reducing costs,” Ilori said in a statement on Thursday.
The inauguration is expected to draw top government officials, including the Minister of State for Petroleum (Oil), Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, Rivers State Governor, Siminalayi Fubara, and key players across the oil and gas sector.
Industry experts have often cited evacuation challenges as a major barrier to achieving the Federal Government’s target of producing three million barrels per day.
The Otakikpo terminal is designed to address that challenge. With an initial storage capacity of 750,000 barrels, expandable to three million barrels, and a loading capacity of 360,000 barrels per day, the facility is projected to serve as a lifeline for over 40 stranded oil fields by providing a reliable evacuation outlet.
Chairman and Chief Executive of GEIL, Professor Anthony Adegbulugbe, described the project as a “game-changing national infrastructure.”
“What we have achieved here is not just a storage solution, but a pathway for about 40 stranded oil fields to finally contribute to the economy,” Adegbulugbe said.
Naijaonpoint reports that Nigeria’s oil and gas industry has, in recent years, grappled with declining production, pipeline vandalism, oil theft, and high operating costs.
The commissioning of the Otakikpo terminal, viewed as a symbolic step in the government’s broader strategy to reposition the petroleum sector as a driver of economic recovery, could help restore investor confidence by lowering costs for indigenous producers and creating new growth opportunities.
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