Port Harcourt refinery to commence operation by end June - NNPC

The Group Managing Director of NNPC, Dr Joseph

Dawha today said the refinery in Port Harcourt

will start refining petroleum products by the end

of this month. Dr Dawha made the announcement

while inspecting some petrol stations in Abuja

today. He said;

"Presently, the refineries are undergoing

rehabilitation and we are undertaking what

we call a new strategy to carry out the

turn around maintenance on them.

Basically, what this means is that we are

carrying out phased implementation of

rehabilitation of the refineries. We are

taking the refineries unit by unit and

carrying out turnaround maintenance on

them. So in other words, if the

maintenance are being carried out on the

run and we started a couple of months

ago.

Most of the refineries have advanced to a

certain stage where they will be able to

operate very soon. For example, the Port

Harcourt refinery, which has reached an

advanced stage, will start receiving crude

by end of this month and then of course

will start contributing to the available

products in the country.”he said Dr Dawha

denied claims that the oil corporation

abandoned the four refineries in Nigeria -

2 in port harcourt, one in Kaduna and one

in Warri “I’ve heard some people say we

have neglected the refineries, no, farther

from that. We hope that at the end of the

exercise, these refineries will be fully back

into operation and we will minimise some of

the problems we have with importation. We

decided that if the refineries were not in

good state to process crude for maximum

gain, then there was no point sending crude

to the refineries. Therefore what you do is

to try and fix it so that by the time you

start processing the crude, you will get

real value for the crude you are sending

to the refineries. We are satisfied with

the level of work that has been carried out

so far in the Port Harcourt refinery, so

that if you start processing crude now you

will get real value."