Refineries to ramp up production to over 10m litres month end

Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has announced that the nation’s three refineries in Kaduna, Port Harcourt and Warri have attained a combined daily production of over 6.76 million litres of petrol per day. This is projected to increase to over 10 million litres per day by the end of January.

Even with the 10 million litres, the refineries are still far from   meeting half of the nation’s demand for petrol as it would require about 35 millions litres on daily basis to meet the nation’s demand.

Also, the price of petrol still ranges between N100 per litre and N150 across the country. The only places you have petrol at controlled price are some parts of Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt.

A statement by the NNPC, which gave a breakdown of the petrol yield from the plants, indicates that while Port Harcourt Refinery which was re-streamed a week earlier is producing some 4.09 million litres, the Kaduna Refinery is contributing some 1.29 million litres and Warri, which was re-streamed on Sunday, is posting a yield of some 1.38 million litres.

The Corporation confirmed that the petrol volumes from the refineries, which are currently operating at an appreciable percentage of their nameplate capacities, would help stabilise the fuel supply and distribution situation in the country.

Meanwhile, the Special Intervention Fuel Supply instituted by Ibe Kachikwu, minister of state for petroleum resources, is intensifying efforts, as there are very noticeable queues in the major cities.

With relative product stability in some major cities like Abuja, Kano and Lagos, the intervention is trucking-out large volumes of petrol to the hinterlands, and deep countryside have made little impacts as the price of the product is still high.

NNPC claim of 22 million litres of fuel to the countryside is not felt.

The minister, while on a walking tour of the Kaduna Refining and Petroc

hemical Company (KRPC), had assured Nigerians that the NNPC was working hard towards ensuring that full efficiency returned to the nation’s refineries, expected to produce about 10 million litres of petrol per day by January 2016.

“The president is very emphatic on this, he says for now; he expects that products should be about N87. He has also given approval for us to be able to look at market trends and make adjustments as need be.

“My commitment and I think that is what the president’s commitment is, is to provide products at all the time so that there is efficiency, and provide it at the least possible price possible and let it have some relationship with what the trends are,” Kachikwu stated.

He reiterated that the federal government would no longer continue to fund the gap paid on subsidy, which runs into huge amount of money.

“I think everybody is on the same page with us that as much as it is, we need to get out of it. The reliability of that and the affordability of that is an issue, we need to get away from it whether or not you believe in subsidy,” he said.

On the refineries gradually coming back on stream, the Minister noted that a lot of energy is deployed into ensuring that are working because according to him, the more they work, the higher the chances that government will fix a “comfortable price” for Nigerians.

He assured Nigerians that by the end of January when all the refineries are fully back on stream, the 10 million-type capacities out of about 40million projected national consumption would be realised.