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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