Port Harcourt Refinery begins operation, says NNPC

The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC Ltd) on Tuesday said Port Harcourt refinery has commenced production after a long period of rehabilitation.

The NNPC Ltd said the refinery began truck loading of petroleum products on Tuesday 26 November.

Olufemi Soneye, the chief corporate communications officer of the company disclosed this in a post on his X handle Tuesday morning.

“PortHarcourt Refinery begins production; truck loading starts today, Tuesday,” Mr Soneye said.

The PortHarcourt Refineries comprise two units, with the old plant having a refining capacity of 60,000 barrels per day (bpd) and the new plant 150,000 bpd, both summing up to 210,000 bpd.

The refinery was shut down in March 2019 for the first phase of repair works after the government secured the service of Italy’s Maire Tecnimont to handle the review of the refinery complex, with oil major Eni appointed technical adviser.

In 2021, NNPC Ltd said repairs had started at PHRC after the Federal Executive Council (FEC) approved$1.5 billion for the project.

On 21 December 2023, the Nigerian government announced the mechanical completion and the flare start-off of the refinery.

Background

Nigeria owns four refineries, two located in Port Harcourt and one in Warri and Kaduna. But the refineries have been moribund for many years despite Turn-Around-Maintenance (TAM) efforts.

The moribund state of the local refineries pushed Nigeria to depend solely on the importation of petroleum products for domestic use for many years, constituting a major drain on the nation’s foreign reserves.

For decades, successive administrations have promised and made moves aimed at reviving the nation’s refineries to reduce dependency on petrol importation but have failed.

In 2015, former President Muhammadu Buhari pledged to revive the country’s minimally performing refineries to optimum capacity and boost foreign reserves by ending the importation of refined fuel.

In November 2018, the Buhari administration fixed December 2019 as the deadline for three refineries to attain full production capacity to end petroleum importation in the country. Later in the month, the deadline was shifted to 2020.

Even though the 2020 deadline was not realised, the government spent N10.23 billion in June 2020 on three refineries that processed zero crude.

In May 2023, the House of Representatives ad-hoc committee on the state of refineries in the country saidthe federal government spent over N11 trillion on the rehabilitation of the refineries from 2010 to 2023.

In August 2023, the President Bola Tinubu administration assured that the PHRC would become functional by December after numerous failed attempts, noting that Warri would come on stream by the end of the first quarter of 2024, and Kaduna would also come on board towards the end of 2024. However, the timelines were not met at the time.

On Monday, the presidency announced that plans for the complete privatisation of Nigeria’s state-owned refineries are currently underway.