The Federal Executive Council has approved the sum of $1.5 billion for the rehabilitation of Portharcourt refinery in Rivers State, Southern Nigeria.
Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva disclosed this to State House Correspondents at the end of Wednesday’s cabinet meeting chaired by President Muhammadu Buhari.
Sylva said this was in fulfilment of government’s desire to resuscitate the country’s refineries so as to reduce the cost of processing petroleum products as well as boost the economy.
He said: “The Ministry of petroleum resources presented a memo on the rehabilitation of Portharcourt refinery for the sum of 1.5 billion, and that memo was $1.5 billion and it was approved by council today.
“So, we are happy to announce that the rehabilitation of Portharcourt refinery will commence forthwith. It is in three phases. The first phase is to be completed in 18 months, which will take the refinery to a production of 90% of its nameplate capacity. The second phase is completed in 24 months and all the final stage will be completed in 44 months and consultations are approved. And I believe that this is good news for Nigerians. They the rehabilitation of refineries have commenced.”
The Minister also disclosed that an Italian company would undertake the repairs and a maintenance company would also be put in place, to ensure efficiency.
“The contractor that was approved by council today is Tecnimont, SPA of Italy. Talking about operations and maintenance, that has been a big problem for our refineries and that was also exhaustively discussed in council and the agreement is that we are going to appoint a professional operations and maintenance and operations company to manage the refinery when it is finally rehabilitated.
“It is actually one of the conditions presented by the lenders, because the lenders said they can give us the money if we have a professional operations and maintenance company and that already is embedded in our discussions with the lenders. We’re not going back on that,” he said.
He assured Nigerians that before the end of the lifetime of the current administration, rehabilitation work for the other refineries in Warri, Kaduna would commence.
Sylva added that the needed funds for the project are all in place and the funding will be shouldered by the Federal government, Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation and Africa Export-Import Bank AFREXIM.
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