Report: Nigerian Refineries Failed to Produce Petroleum Products in Nine Months

Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja

Refineries in the country, located in Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna, have yet to produce a drop of petroleum in the last nine months, report from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), has indicated.

Excerpts from the latest document released by the corporation showed that the refineries with a combined installed capacity to refine 445,000 barrels per day locally, had been operating at zero consolidated capacity utilisation level since July last year.

THISDAY gathered that before July last year, the facilities worked at 5.5 per cent in January, 13.18 per cent in February, 3.17 per cent in March, zero per cent in April, 1.75 in May and 2.4 per cent of installed capacity in June before it completely stopped production since July last year till date.

While the current combined installed capacity of PHRC is 210,000 bpd, those of KRPC and WRPC are 110,000 and 125,000 respectively and when functional are able to refine products ranging from petrol, jet fuel, diesel, fuel oil and liquefied petroleum gas.

The NNPC has therefore in all the months that the refineries have been out of service, fully embarked upon the importation of all the petrol consumed by Nigerians, which the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) put at 38.2 million litres daily.

However, the report noted that the refineries, for the whole nine months stretch they have not operated were undergoing rehabilitation, which accounts for why the country now sources all its needed daily use of the product from outside the shores of Nigeria.

In January, the Senate while setting up a probe panel on the matter, put the turnaround maintenance expenditure on the ailing refineries just between 2013 and 2015 at $396 million without commensurate results.

Describing the constant importation of the product as an ‘embarrassment’, the President, Ahmed Lawan, mandated its Committee on Downstream Petroleum Sector to carry out a holistic investigation on the turnaround maintenance expenditure and current state of the refineries in the country.

But the Group General Manager , Group Public Affairs , Mr. Kennie Obateru, told THISDAY yesterday that the maintenance of the refineries would be extended till the end of 2023.

He added that the expectation of the corporation is that by the time the Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) is fully completed, the plants would be able to operate at about 90 per cent.

“The ongoing revamp of the plants is expected to be completed by fourth quarter of 2023. It would ultimately improve the capacity utilisation of the facilities in line with the set roadmap for the rehabilitation to achieve at least 90 per cent capacity utilisation upon completion of the process,” he said.

According to the full NNPC report ,which chronicled the fact that Nigeria is not currently refining in the country, the corporation has continued the distribution of the imported products to reach all Nigerians.

“In December 2019 (till now), the three refineries processed no crude and produced -619 MT (metric tonnes) of finished products; comprising -2,593 MT and 1974 MT by WRPC and PHRC respectively. Combined yield efficiency is 0.00 per cent owing largely to on-going rehabilitation works in the refineries.

“For the month of December 2019, the three refineries produced -4,513 MT of intermediate products at combined capacity utilisation of 0.00 per cent. The intermediate products were primarily used by WRPC and PHRC.