No refinery in Nigeria has undergone maintenance in 42yrs —NNPC

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has said none of the country’s refineries has undergone Turn Around Maintainance (TAM) in 42 years.

The Group Managing Director, NNPC, Maikanti Baru, disclosed this in his New Year message issued by the corporation’s spokesman, Ndu Ughamadu, in Abuja, on Monday, adding that the challenges not withstanding, major rehabilitation works were carried out in all the three refineries.

Baru also noted that the Warri Refinery and Petrochemical Company had its Distribution Control System successfully upgraded, while the Port Harcourt Refining Company had major interventions in Fluid Catalytic Cracking Unit and Power Plant Unit fixed.

The NNPC GMD also revealed that the Kaduna Refinery and Petrochemical Company was undergoing major repairs of its FCCU, Catalytic Reforming Unit and Crude Distillation Unit 2, adding that efforts were ongoing to get the original builders of the refineries to carry out TAM on them after securing favourable private funding for the exercise.

Baru further disclosed that all existing power plants across the country now had a permanent gas supply pipeline infrastructure assuring that the corporation would continue to expand and integrate its gas pipeline network system to meet increasing domestic gas demand.

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The key gas pipeline infrastructure projects, according to Baru include Escravos-Lagos Pipeline System II, Obiafu/Obrikom-Oben, Odidi-Warri Expansion Pipeline, Trans Nigeria Pipeline Project – Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano Pipeline, Trans Nigeria Pipeline Project and Nigeria-Morocco Gas Pipeline Project.

According to him, the NNPC would bridge the medium-term domestic gas supply deficit by 2020 through the corporation’s seven critical gas development projects, adding that a reputable project management consulting firm was collaborating with an NNPC team to achieve accelerated implementation of the projects.

He further stated that the full implementation of the project would boost domestic gas supply from about 1.5 billion standard cubic feet per day to 5 billion scf/d by 2020, with a corresponding 500 per cent increase in power generation and stimulation of gas-based industrialisation.

The NNPC GMD also revealed that the corporation imported a total of 15.87 million metric tonnes of Premium Motor Spirit, otherwise called petrol in 2018, an increase of 62 per cent over the 2017 supplies of 9.8 million metric tonnes.

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