Nigeria’s Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Heineken Lokpobiri says the NNPCL.is responsible for refineries’ rehabilitation.
According to him, the NNPCL should be held responsible for meeting up with the deadline date for the completion of the refineries’ rehabilitation.
He stated this while responding to questions about the completion of the refineries on November 3 after the Minister’s cabinet retreat.
- He said: “Yes, the rehabilitation of the refineries, if you remember, was started by the previous administration and as part of the President’s directive. I have gone around all the refineries and from what they have briefed me, Port Harcourt has three phases.
- “So Phase 1 will be ready by the end of this year. I am not the one who is directly in charge of rehabilitation; it is the NNPCL and they have told me and I am holding them accountable.
- “For Warri refinery, they said Phase 1 will be ready by the end of the year. Phases 2 and 3 in Port Harcourt will be ready next year, and the whole Kaduna refinery will be ready by the end of next year.
- “That is what they said, and I am holding them accountable for their own words. I believe that those refineries, if we are able to achieve some level of rehabilitation by the end of this year, will also improve our domestic refining capacity.
- “But that is not even the problem; the Dangote refinery, too, is coming.
- “We have a lot of modular refineries that we have given licenses, but the challenge has been the feedstock. Even if you have a modular refinery, do you have the crude to be able to refine it?
- “That’s why I said unless we produce sufficient quantities, even if the refineries are rehabilitated, there will be no feedstock. So, my challenge is to ramp up production to see how we can feed not only the big refineries but also the modular ones. These are the real employers of labour and they will do the magic,”
Note that the Minister has said that the focus of this administration is on how to significantly increase oil production while the country is fighting against crude oil theft. In September 2023, Nigeria produced about 1.3 million barrels of crude oil per day amidst sabotage of oil and gas assets in the Niger Delta region.
Some insights on Nigerian refineries
In June 2023, it became public knowledge that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited had allocated a substantial sum of N4.8 trillion to manage the state-owned refineries over the course of a decade, from 2010 to 2020.
As per the findings disclosed by the Federal House of Representatives, the operational performance of the Port Harcourt, Warri, and Kaduna refineries had consistently fallen short, maintaining a production level below 30% since 2010.
The House of Representatives’ report brought attention to the considerable financial disbursement, despite the refineries consistently operating at a significantly lower capacity than their potential. This significant expenditure continued despite the refineries being largely non-functional for a substantial period.
Moreover, in August 2023, the National Assembly announced its plans to investigate the purported N11.3 trillion expenditure by the Federal Government on the turnaround maintenance of Nigeria’s refineries during the same period, from 2010 to 2020.
This move signals an effort to scrutinize and understand the sizable financial commitment towards turnaround maintenance in light of the refineries’ suboptimal performance and operational inefficiencies.