Port-Harcourt Refinery: NNPC elucidates $1.5bn for rehabilitation

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has explained why the Federal Government is spending the huge sum of $1.5 billion on rehabilitating the Port Harcourt refinery, as it weighs in on the controversies and unverified claims by some Nigerians on the funds for the project.

According to the NNPC, the funds approved for the 210,000 barrels per day capacity refinery is for complete rehabilitation and not turnaround maintenance.

This was disclosed by  the NNPC’s Group Managing Director (GMD), Mallam  Mele Kolo Kyari, during a chat in Abuja with the press on issues surrounding the rehabilitation of the refinery.

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GMD @NNPCgroup Mallam @MKKyari provides answers.#KyariSpeaksOnRefineryRehabilitation pic.twitter.com/xHt1UEJjr1

— NNPC Group (@NNPCgroup) March 22, 2021

Kyari said that the refinery would work in optimal capacity upon the completion of the rehabilitation programme.

“We are not doing turnaround maintenance, we are doing rehabilitation of the refinery, and it is very different; it means that we are replacing certain major components.

“We are introducing some items that ordinarily we won’t need to do in turnaround maintenance and there are major shifts in the status of the plant that we have to do and it is not done during turnaround maintenance.

“During rehabilitation, by the 18th month, part of this plant will begin to produce, particularly the gasoline plants. In rehabilitation, we normally don’t shut down the plant completely, we repair a segment of it, and then it starts working, and then, you move to the next segment.

“You continue to scale up and that is why, within the four-year period, the contractor would have completely left your premises. What it means in a technical sense is that in 18 months, we will see production coming from that plant; we will follow it plant by the plant until we are completely done,”  Kyari said.

Amaka E. Nliam