Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPCL, Mele Kyari has said the Port Harcourt refinery will resume operations in April.
In a statement, the NNPCL chief explained that mechanical works have been completed on the facility which has received over 450,000 barrels of crude following delivery from active lines.
He also said repair works at the Kaduna and Warri refineries are near completion, adding that the Kaduna refinery is expected to commence operations in December.
Meanwhile, the Senate has dismissed an alleged report of fraud in the turnaround maintenance of the nation’s refineries being undertaken by the NNPCL.
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The move is coming about three years after Nigeria approved funding of $1.5 billion to repair the Port Harcourt refinery, one of its biggest oil refineries.
Despite being Africa’s number one oil producer, Nigeria has relied on imports of petroleum products because of a lack of domestic refining capacity.
“We are happy to announce that the rehabilitation of the refinery will commence in three phases,” the then Minister of State for Petroleum Timipre Sylva told reporters.
“The first phase is to be completed in 18 months, which will take the refinery to a production of 90 percent of its nameplate capacity,” said Sylva, adding that the second phase would be completed in 24 months and the third in 44 months.
The Port Harcourt refinery is Nigeria’s oldest, built in 1965, nine years after oil was found under the marshy soil and creeks of the delta, where the Niger river runs off into the Gulf of Guinea.
Refineries in nearby Warri and Kaduna in the North-Central region, were built in the years that followed, while a new plant was added to the same site in Port Harcourt in 1989.
In recent years, however, the facilities have been more idle than operational.
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