Hope rises as Port Harcourt refinery bounces back next month

Hopes of petroleum products consumers may have risen following the recent confirmation by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) that the Port Harcourt refinery would begin operation by July, 2015.

The Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Joseph T. Dawha, who disclosed this at the monitoring of filling stations in Abuja recently said, when the ongoing Rehabilitation and Turn Around Maintenance of the Port Harcourt Refining Company Limited is completed in July, 2015, the plant would run at 80 per cent installed capacity and produce five million litres of petrol on a daily basis.

Dawha said the ongoing Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) of the refineries was a conscious effort to ensure that they were all running.

“If the refineries were not in depth or in good state to process crude for maximum gain there was no need of sending crude to such refineries for processing.

“What we do is to fix them so that we can get the real value for products. We are satisfied with the level of work carried out so far at the Port Harcourt Refinery so that if we start processing crude now we will get value for the refined products. So there will not be distraction as it will be, if refineries were operating properly.”

The GMD also decried the spate of vandalism of the pipeline in the country, stressing that the NNPC was working hard to put in place mechanism to minimise the menace.

He described the situation as a very ‘serious matter’, noting that NNPC could not use the pipeline network supply because of vandalism.

“If you send products through the vandalised pipeline then you lose the product. We cannot live it that way; we have to repair them but as you do that, it is vandalised again. It is a very serious matter. We are left with the option of trucking which involves a lot of logistics to succeed,” he said.

The Managing Director of the Pipeline Products Marketing Company (PPMC), Prince HarunaMomoh, condemned the recent vandalised system 2B pipeline of the NNPC in Lagos.

According to him, the system 2B pipeline in IjeOdodo in Lagos is the most vandalised structure.

He said that already the situation had been controlled and repair of the pipeline would soon begin.

“As at today, the NNPC imports 50 per cent of the petroleum products into the country as part of the 40 million litres daily consumption by Nigerians.

`The corporation will continue to intensify its efforts to wet the country with products from its coastal depots to inland depots.”