NNPC Board to Approve Firms to Fund Refineries’ Revamp

The board of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) will approve the final list of financiers selected to fund the revamp of NNPC’s refineries in Kaduna, Warri and Port Harcourt at its meeting this month, the corporation’s Group Managing Director, Dr. Maikanti Baru, has disclosed.

Baru in a statement from the Group General Manager, Public Affairs of the NNPC, Mr. Ndu Ughamadu, yesterday in Abuja, said the corporation was inching closer to arriving at the choice of financiers for the revamp programme which he said will restore the production capacities of the refineries to 90 per cent.

He stated during a town hall meeting with NNPC’s workers, where he briefed them on the current situation with petrol supply in the country that the Port Harcourt Refining Company Limited (PHRC), Warri Refining and Petrochemical Company Limited (WRPC) and Kaduna Refining and Petrochemical Company Limited (KRPC) were all up for revamp in the programme.

According to him, the programme was the corporation’s best bet at assuring steady petroleum products supply and distribution in Nigeria.
Baru explained that agreements on the potential financiers for the refineries were being fine-tuned for the board’s endorsement this month.

“We are pushing towards the final selection of our financiers and we expect that when that is done, we’ll get the agreements and present them to our board, meeting this month to secure their endorsement and once we have the funding, we would start the rehabilitation of the refineries towards a 90 per cent capacity utilisation per stream day before the end of 2019,” he said.
The procedure for selecting the financiers, he noted was painstaking but necessary to ensure a desired closure on the subject.

The NNPC boss said the corporation was also encouraging new refining capacities to come on board, and that two consortia had indicated interest to co-locate refineries in Warri and Port Harcourt.
He said it would provide utility services such as power, processed steam, water and land to the firms and has agreed in broad terms on areas of collaboration to fast track the development.

“Am happy to inform you that progress has been made, up to the level of an acceptable detailed engineering design and we are in the process of mobilising some of the refineries already identified for installation in Nigeria,” he explained.

KRPC, he noted has also attracted the interest of the Kaduna State Government, which he said was championing a proposal to co-locate another refinery close to it.
He said Greenfield Refineries would also come up in Kano and Kaduna soon, and would use crude oil from Niger Republic. Their designs, he added were equally ready.

On modular refineries, he said the Ministry of Petroleum Resources and NNPC were working to set up some in the Niger Delta.
“So far, about 35 interests for modular refineries have been declared and the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) has issued licenses to about 13 and I have been invited to the ground breaking ceremony of the first one in Bayelsa next month,” he stated.