Warri, Port Harcourt Refineries commence preliminary production
After a nine-month phased rehabilitation exercise, the Port Harcourt and Warri refineries plants in Nigeria have commenced preliminary production of petroleum products after successful test-run.
This was disclosed in a statement signed by the Spokesman of the Corporation, Mr. Ohi Alegbe, VON reports.
According to the statement “while the Port Harcourt Refinery Company (PHRC) is ramping up its operation to about 60 percent of its 210, 000 barrels per day name plate capacity, the WRPC production is projected to hit 80 percent of its installed 125,000 barrel per day capacity”
“The Port Harcourt Refinery is projected to boost the nation’s local refining capacity with a product yield of 5million litres of petrol per day while Warri Refinery would contribute 3.5 million litres of petrol to local refining capacity.
The Management of NNPC said the rehabilitation was conducted by its in-house engineers and technicians.
“NNPC had to adopt the phased rehabilitation strategy after the Original Refinery Builders (ORB) who were initially contacted for the project came up with unfavourable terms”.
“Though a decision was taken in 2011 to rehabilitate all the refineries using the ORB of each of the refineries, we were impelled to switch strategy after the ORBs declined participation and nominated some partners in their stead who came up with outrageously unfavorable terms’’, the statement read in part.
Rehabilitation Strategy
The NNPC stated that the nominated partners, as sole-bidders came up with humongous price offers after two years of thorough and exhaustive scope of work definition and price negotiations. The proxies were also unwilling to provide post rehabilitation performance guarantees.
According to NNPC “The phased rehabilitation strategy which entailed phased and simultaneous rehabilitation of all the refineries using in-house and locally available resources in line with the spirit and letter of the Nigerian Content Law, also involved the use of Original Equipment Manufacturer representatives to effect major equipment overhaul and rehabilitation’’.
NNPC also said that the phased rehabilitation programme which started in October 2014 after the required funding stream was established, created a 70 percent reduction in costs which helped in mitigating the financing challenges of refinery rehabilitation.
The Corporation said that with the successful re-streaming of the PHRC and WRPC, attention has now moved to the 110, 000 barrels per day Kaduna Refining and Petrochemicals Company which is billed to come on stream soon.
In a related development, NNPC also announced the successful recovery if the System2B Pipeline which was breached last week at Arepo, Ogun State , North- west Nigeria.
“Pumping of products through the System 2B Pipeline at Arepo, Ogun state commenced on Monday upon successful completion of repair work over the weekend” NNPC disclosed.
The Corporation urged Vandals to desist from Vandalising Pipelines “We also wish to call on all those engaged in the criminal acts of pipeline sabotage and oil theft to desist in order to avoid such horrendous deaths as was witnessed in the recent incident.”
Posted by Janice Johnson
