Will P’Harcourt refinery return to life by July as promised?

Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) says the Port Harcourt Refining Company Limited will start refining crude oil by the end of this month,

Group Managing Director, NNPC, Dr. Joseph Dawha, who stated this in Abuja on Thursday after inspecting some petrol stations in the city, said, “Presently, the refineries are undergoing rehabilitation and we are undertaking what we call a new strategy to carry out the turn around maintenance on them. Basically, what this means is that we are carrying out phased implementation of rehabilitation of the refineries.

“We are taking the refineries unit by unit and carrying out turnaround maintenance on them. So in other words, the maintenance are 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 available products in the country.”

He continued, “I’ve heard some people say we have neglected the refineries, no, far from that. We hope that at the end of the exercise, these refineries will be fully back into operation and we will minimise some of the problems we have with importation.”

He explained that why the refineries were not running was a conscious decision, adding that “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 it 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 Product Marketing Company, Mr. Haruna Momoh, stated that the NNPC imports 50 per cent of petroleum products into the country.

He noted that when the ongoing rehabilitation and turn around maintenance of the Port Harcourt refinery is completed in July, 2015, the plant would run at 80 per cent installed capacity and produce five million litres of petrol on a daily basis.

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