Ihenacho flags off construction work at $450m Tomaro Industrial Park in Lagos
Chairman/Chief Executive Officer of Integrated Oil and Gas/Genesis Shipping Worldwide, promoters of Tomaro Industrial Parks, Captain Emmanuel Ihenacho, has flagged off construction activities on Tomaro Industrial Park, a Free Trade Zone (FTZ) in Lagos.
In line with growing private participation in industrial clusters development, the federal government had pronounced the area a Free Trade Zone (FTZ) in Lagos, thus sparking off massive investment drive by business concerns.
During the site tour with journalists on the facility in Lagos, Captain Ihenacho, explained that the project, expected to gulp $450 million, comprises Tomaro tank farm, shipyard, oil rig fabrication plant and modular refinery.
According to him, “The tank farm project consists of 30 tank bases with storage capacity of 500 million litres of fuel and considering the capacity, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) would be at liberty to draw fuel for 15 days from the facility when there are ups and down in fuel supply in Nigeria”.
“It is going to be a strategic storage and product supply tank farm. Most tank farms rely on an arrangement where ships supply them and trucks come to pick products from the farms but because we are located on the Island as well as the function, the farm is designed to be supplied by ships and discharged also by ships. This means that smaller vessels would be used to take the products from Tomaro tank farms to the farms located at the ports.”
Continuing, he said “With the capacity in Tomaro, there is no reason the park would not be the centre for tank farm operation because it would not only supply Apapa and Tin-Can but also facilities in Port Harcourt, Warri and even some of the countries in West African region like Ghana, Lome. “That is why this facility is an industrial park and an FTZ.”
Industry analysts say the tank farm and the refinery will complement supplies from the emerging Dangote refinery to saturate the nation with locally refined petroleum products.
While hinting that “The master plan of the island would include a helicopter servicing facility, hotels and living quarters, heliport, as well as waste treatment and disposal plants,” a top official of NEPZA, Mrs. Eloho Francis, observed that “when completed, the project would create a lot of jobs and increase revenue generation for the nation”.
