Refurbished Port Harcourt Refinery to bring relief to South East, North Central regions

… as NNPC confirms prelimary operation of Port Harcourt, Warri refineries

With the Port Harcourt Refinery coming into production, the South Eastern part of the country and some parts of the North Central would be the major beneficiaries of petrol that will flow from the plant, an industry source told BusinessDay.

The source said the deluge of trucks shuttling between the Lagos depots and the Eastern part of the country, bringing with them stress to the roads, congestion and the hazard of accidents, would be significantly reduced.

He further said that this was sure to bring relief to the people of the zone, as the price of petrol would drop as a result of increased supply.

Petrol sells for between N120 and N150 per litre up country, as agaist N87 and N100 in Lagos and some other cities.

Goods and services then tend to cost more in the hinterland, as businesses transfer their extra cost to the
consumer.

The Port Harcourt plant’s Crude Distillation Unit (CDU) is operational, while work on the Vacuum Distillation Unit (VDU) is in progress and would be completed by the end of this week.

The Fluid Catalytic Cracking Unit (FCCU), which is a key component of the petrol plant, is next in line for rehabilitation and this is coming soon, the source said.

According to the sources, the plant is currently producing Straight Run Gasoline, which contains more of Naptha and liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) and other associated gasses.

The refinery is said to have substancial volume of this product, which would have to be blended so as to be fit for use.

The current volume of crude supplied to Port Harcourt Refinery could only last for 15 days, a source said, adding that there are plans to step up allocation.

Warri Refinery is said to be working at 60 percent of capacity but the management of the plant is keeping
the details to itself.

Babajide Soyode, former general manager of Warri Refinery, commenting on the development, commended the efforts of the management on the refinery, but said the four refineries could not produce 445,000 barrels per day in their current condition.

“They would never produce 445,000 barrels per day, because their basic technically feasible production is 350,000 barrels per day, all combined,” he said.

Soyode said that in its current design, Warri Refinery could only produce 100,000 barrels per day, as against the projection of 125,000, while Kaduna Refinery can only produce 100,00 barrels per day and Port Harcourt just 150,000 barrels per day.

Reacting to this development, the management of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has said that the Port Harcourt and Warri refineries have been successfully streamed after a nine- month phased rehabilitation exercise conducted by its in-house engineers and technicians.

The corporation in a statement reveals that both plants have commenced preliminary production of petroleum products after successful test runs, noting that while PHRC is ramping up its operations to about 60 percent of its 210,000 barrels per day name plate capacity, WRPC production is projected to hit 80 percent of its installed 125,000 bpd capacity.

According to Ohi Alegbe, group general manger, public affairs, NNPC, in the statement, the PHRC is projected to boost local refining capacity with a product yield of 5 million litres of petrol per day, while WRPC would contribute 3.5 million litres of petrol to local refining capacity.

Providing insight into the rehabilitation exercise, the NNPC noted that it had to adopt the phased rehabilitation strategy after the Original Refinery Builders (ORB) who were initially contacted for the project came up with unfavorable terms.

OLUSOLA BELLO