A chemical maker with no refinery history. An untraceable industrial park firm. The GCEO who called the last restart a national embarrassment now announces a new one. Nigeria’s refinery saga enters a dangerous new chapter.
KEHINDE ADEGOKE unearths.
In a signing ceremony in Jiaxing City, China, NNPC Limited Group Chief Executive Officer Bayo Ojulari signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) — a non-binding agreement that outlines the intention to collaborate — with two Chinese companies: Sanjiang Chemical Company and Xinganchen (Fuzhou) Industrial Park Operation and Management Co., Ltd. NNPC described this agreement as a Technical Equity Partnership, meaning a partnership where the Chinese firms would contribute technical expertise and investment in exchange for a share of ownership or control, to restart and expand the Port Harcourt and Warri Refineries.
The announcement generated the predictable wave of optimistic headlines. Nigeria’s refinery resurrection. Chinese investment. A new dawn for domestic petroleum production. Since the announcement, TheDiggerNews.com has probed the missing details overlooked in those headlines. The answers—or rather, the lack of them—tell a story. Every Nigerian with a stake in the $2.39 billion already spent on these refineries deserves to read it in full.
THE PARTNERS NOBODY CAN FIND
Sanjiang Chemical Company is partially traceable. Its official website — chinasanjiang.com — describes it as a privately owned Chinese manufacturer and supplier of ethylene oxide and AEO surfactants, headquartered in Jiaxing City, Zhejiang Province. The company’s own words are instructive: “We are a manufacturer and supplier of consumer chemicals and their ingredients. Our major products include ethylene oxide and AEO surfactants, which are the core components for household cleansing and cosmetic products.”
Read that again slowly. Household cleansing and cosmetic products.
This is the company NNPC Limited has selected as a Technical Equity Partner to restart and expand Nigeria’s Port Harcourt and Warri Refineries — facilities that, between them, consumed $2.39 billion in rehabilitation funds and whose failure the current NNPC GCEO publicly described as a national waste.
It is, however, not a refinery operator. There is no publicly available record — in any international energy database, any refinery project registry, or any industry publication — of Sanjiang Chemical Company ever building, operating, or managing a crude oil refinery anywhere in the world. Not in China. Not in Africa. Not anywhere.
TheDiggerNews.com visited the company’s website and reviewed its corporate profile. The findings are unambiguous: Sanjiang has built large-scale petrochemical plants and crackers, but there is no evidence that the company has ever constructed a crude oil refinery. Its strength lies in downstream chemicals and integrated olefin and ethylene oxide production — a discipline that is technically related to petroleum but fundamentally distinct from crude oil refinery operations.
TheDiggerNews.com tried to contact Sanjiang Chemical Company, but could not find any publicly available email or international contact. This is an unusual omission for a company positioned as a strategic partner in a major African energy project.
Xinganchen (Fuzhou) Industrial Park Operation and Management Co., Ltd. presents an even more alarming profile — because it presents almost no profile at all. TheDiggerNews.com‘s investigation found this company to be virtually untraceable in international databases.
Not a single Nigerian outlet or global energy publication has produced a company profile, revenue figure, or project portfolio for this firm. Its name does not appear in any refinery project database searched. It does not feature in Bloomberg, Reuters, or any energy industry registry. Its physical address could not be located. No email address or contact details of any kind were found.
From what limited intelligence TheDiggerNews.com has been able to assemble, Xinganchen appears to be a specialised industrial park operator — potentially brought in to complement Sanjiang’s petrochemical expertise for the refinery rehabilitation and operation project. It is not a household name in the global energy sector and has remained entirely under the radar until this high-profile Nigerian partnership thrust it into public view.
A company invisible in any international database — and unreachable through public channels — was chosen through undisclosed means as Technical Equity Partner for Nigeria’s two most critical refineries.
The question that demands an answer — and that NNPC has not been asked publicly until now — is the simplest possible question in corporate due diligence:
What refinery has either of these companies ever operated?
THE $2.39 BILLION GRAVEYARD
To understand why that question matters so urgently, one must understand what has already been spent — and lost — on these same refineries.
Under the Buhari administration, the federal government committed $2.39 billion to the rehabilitation of the Port Harcourt and Warri Refineries. The Port Harcourt Refinery alone consumed $1.5 billion. The Warri Refinery absorbed $897.6 million.
The Port Harcourt Refinery was declared operational in November 2024. It was shut down six months later, in May 2025, because of ongoing and severe financial losses. A review after the shutdown showed losses between $300 million and $500 million each month it ran, and only about 40 per cent of the 50,000 barrels of crude input were converted into refined output.
The closure of the Port Harcourt Refinery over the five-month period between May 24 and October 31, 2025, cost the Federal Government an estimated $249.7 million — equivalent to ₦366.21 billion.
The Warri Refinery had been shut down since January 25, 2025, due to safety issues with its Crude Distillation Unit Main Heater, and was revealed to have failed to produce petrol despite $897.6 million in maintenance spending, shut down barely a month after then-GCEO Mele Kyari announced it was working.
The cumulative picture is stark: $2.39 billion spent under Buhari. $249.7 million was lost in five months after the shutdown. And now — a new MoU with two companies whose combined refinery operating experience cannot be publicly verified — with no cost figure disclosed, no binding terms published, and no timeline announced.
THE MAN WHO CALLED IT A WASTE — NOW SIGNING FOR MORE
The most devastating element of this story is not the companies. It is the man who signed the MoU.
Bayo Ojulari, NNPC’s current Group Chief Executive Officer, did not inherit the Port Harcourt Refinery’s failure silently. He condemned it publicly and in terms that left no room for ambiguity.
On the restart under his predecessor, Mele Kyari, Ojulari said: “The first thing that became clear was that we were running at a monumental loss to Nigeria. We were just wasting money.”
He described an operation losing between $300 million and $500 million every month. He called it a national embarrassment. He used the word “waste” — not “underperformance,” not “challenge,” not “learning curve.” Waste.
That same Bayo Ojulari has now signed an MoU to restart and expand the same refinery — with companies that have no publicly verifiable operating history of refineries — without disclosing a single figure for the cost commitment, the loss threshold, or the exit mechanism if the new partnership reproduces the catastrophe of the last one.
The core issue is structural, not subtle — and it demands an answer.
THE JIAXING QUESTION
A geographic detail in the MoU stands out. Sanjiang Chemical Company is based in Jiaxing City, Zhejiang Province. The signing ceremony was held there too. NNPC’s leaders travelled to the partners’ home base. This raises a question: did NNPC select them through a fair, competitive tender — or via informal channels?
Who arranged this engagement? How were two companies—one only partially traceable as a chemicals maker and one virtually untraceable—selected as partners for Nigeria’s leading industrial assets? No competitive tender for these partners has been announced or documented in any public record reviewed by TheDiggerNews.com.
THE POLICY CONTRADICTION NOBODY HAS INTERROGATED
In November 2025, Special Adviser on Energy Olu Verheijen stated publicly that the Tinubu administration remained open to the potential sale of NNPC’s refinery assets.
A Technical Equity Partnership MoU is neither a sale nor a transparent concession. It appears to contradict, complicate, or replace the policy statement without explanation. No Nigerian outlet has directly asked the Presidency or NNPC about this contradiction.
Is Nigeria selling the refineries, partnering with them, or keeping them public while bringing in technical operators? The policy is unclear. The MoU does not provide clarity. It increases the confusion.
WHAT NIGERIA MUST DEMAND
Beyond this specific investigation, three lines of accountability require immediate public pursuit:
Line 1 — Company Due Diligence: NNPC must publicly disclose Sanjiang and Xinganchen’s refinery operating credentials — including the countries of prior projects, operational capacity, and financial documentation — before a single naira of public money is committed to this partnership.
Line 2 — The Money Trail: The total cost commitment under the new Technical Equity Partnership must be publicly disclosed and compared to the $2.39 billion already spent. The loss threshold — the point at which the partnership is terminated — must be defined in the contract and publicly stated.
Line 3 — Process Accountability: National Assembly committees must demand full disclosure of the partner selection process. If there was no competitive tender, this must be stated, and the reasons for it must be openly defended.
THE PATTERN THAT CANNOT BE IGNORED
This is not a milestone story about a new refinery deal. It is a pattern story — and the pattern is now unmistakable.
Nigeria has spent $2.39 billion rehabilitating refineries that do not work. It has lost $249.7 million in five months operating a refinery; its own GCEO called it a waste. It has now signed an MoU with two companies — one a chemical manufacturer with no known refinery history, one virtually invisible in international databases — without disclosing a cost figure, a binding timeline, or the outcome of any competitive selection process.
The refineries are not a technical problem. They are a governance problem. And the governance problem is not being solved by a signing ceremony in Jiaxing City.
Nigeria’s energy future — and the billions of public funds committed to securing it — deserves better than ghost partners, undisclosed costs, and a GCEO whose own words constitute the most damning indictment of the policy he is now repeating.
TheDiggerNews.com has dispatched a formal inquiry letter to NNPC Limited. Direct contact with Sanjiang Chemical Company and Xinganchen (Fuzhou) Industrial Park Operation and Management Co., Ltd. proved impossible — neither company has publicly accessible email addresses or any other contact details. The absence of publicly available contact information for two companies designated as Technical Equity Partners in Nigeria’s most strategically significant energy infrastructure project is itself a finding this publication considers material to the public interest. This investigation is ongoing.