- Port Harcourt Refinery will this week resume full production of petrol, when Chrome Oil Services Limited would have completed the rehabilitation of Area 3, where petrol, Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) and other lighter products are produced.
- The 210,000 barrels per day capacity refinery had earlier started te first stage of production with Unit 1 producing largely Dual Purpose Kerosene (DPK) and Automotive Gas (AGO), otherwise known as diesel.
- Making this announcement, the Chairman of the Chrome Group, Emeka Offor told newsmen at the weekend that since 2000 when Chrome Consortium successfully completed the Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) of Port Harcourt Refinery, his company had remained in the refinery to provide massive maintenance services because of the satisfactory completion of the TAM.
- Offor stated that his company was the lead partner in the consortium that carried out the turn -around maintenance, which was certified by Shell Manufacturing Services, an international company that supervises TAM in refineries.
- He stated that as a life-running plant, the refinery is supposed to have TAM every two years but noted that no TAM has been carried out since 2000.
- Offor said his company had also done some intervention jobs in Kaduna Refinery, adding that the major Fluid Catalytic Cracking Unit (FCCU) heater in Kaduna refinery was rehabilitated by Chrome Oil on time and on schedule.
He identified vandalism and lack of supply of crude oil as the twin-evils that contributed largely to the problems of the refineries.
“Vandalism would have caused part of these problems. If the refineries are not getting crude oil, may be, that is the reason the government did not deem it fit to make funds available for TAM. I know that TAM is very expensive. If you finish TAM and you don’t get crude to run the refinery, it is not economical. The two factors are that the refineries must get feed, and which means that we must make sure that the issue of vandalism is stopped. If the issue of vandalism is stopped, then we can hold government to monitor the pipelines. But Nigerians have to be educated too. In other countries, they have refineries, pipelines and cables and you don’t go to the United States or London or even in the Eastern Europe to cut pipelines. We have to talk to our people; if these two problems that go together are resolved, the refineries will work well,” Offor explained.
- Offor also stated that crude oil is currently being supplied to Port Harcourt Refinery through marine vessels because of vandalism of pipelines.
- Source: Energy Mix Report
