The Port Harcourt Refining Company Limited will start refining crude oil and will contribute to petroleum products’ availability by the end of this month, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation has said.
The corporation also gave an assurance that on or before the end of this week, the scarcity of Premium Motor Spirit, otherwise known as petrol, would cease across the country.
The Group Managing Director, NNPC, Dr. Joseph Dawha, said these in Abuja on Thursday after inspecting some filling stations in the city.
He said, “Presently, the refineries are undergoing rehabilitation and we are undertaking what we call a new strategy to carry out the turnaround maintenance on them. Basically, what this means is that we are carrying out phased implementation of the rehabilitation of the refineries.
“We are taking the refineries unit by unit and carrying out turnaround maintenance on them. In other words, the maintenance is being carried out on the run and we started a couple of months ago.
“Most of the refineries have advanced to a certain stage where they will be able to operate very soon. For example, the Port Harcourt refinery, which has reached an advanced stage, will start receiving crude by end of this month; and then, of course, will start contributing to the availability of products in the country.”
The NNPC has four refineries, two in Port Harcourt, and one each in Kaduna and Warri. The refineries have a combined installed capacity of 445,000 barrels per day. A comprehensive network of pipelines and depots strategically located throughout the country links these refineries.
Dawha said the maintenance exercise on the refineries was spontaneously taking place in all the facilities.
He said, “At the end of the target 18 months, most of the refineries would have been rehabilitated to such a level where they can actually process crude optimally to make contributions to the availability of products in the country.
“I’ve heard some people say we have neglected the refineries; no, farther from that. We hope that at the end of the exercise, these refineries will be fully back in operation and we will minimise some of the problems we have with importation.”
The NNPC boss explained that the reason why the refineries were not running was a conscious decision, adding, “We decided that if the refineries were not in good state to process crude for maximum gain, then there was no point sending crude to the refineries.
“Therefore, what you do is to try and fix them so that by the time you start processing the crude, you will get real value for the crude you are sending to the refineries. We are satisfied with the level of work that has been carried out so far in the Port Harcourt refinery so that if you start processing crude now, you will get real value.”
The Managing Director, Pipelines and Product Marketing Company, Mr. Haruna Momoh, stated that the NNPC was importing 50 per cent of petroleum products into the country.
He noted that upon the completion of the ongoing rehabilitation and turnaround maintenance of the Port Harcourt refinery in July, the plant would run at 80 per cent of its installed capacity and produce five million litres of petrol on a daily basis.
Dawha called on the marketers to start importing PMS, stressing that the current distribution challenge was largely due to their non-involvement, a development that had resulted in the scarcity of petrol nationwide.
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