The New Port Harcourt Refining Company, PHRC 2, will this week begin full production of Premium Motor Spirit, PMS, popularly called petrol, after the completion of the rehabilitation of Area 3, where petrol, Liquefied Petroleum Gas, LPG, and other lighter products are produced. This will reduce the importation of fuel by 40 per cent when fully operational.
The 210,000 barrels per day capacity refinery had last month commenced preliminary production with Unit 1 producing largely Dual Purpose Kerosene (DPK) and Automotive Gas (AGO), otherwise known as diesel.
Disclosing this to newsmen over the weekend, Chairman of the Chrome Group, Sir Emeka Offor, revealed 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.
The multi-billionaire business mogul stated that his company was the lead partner in the consortium that carried out the TAM, 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.
Noting that since 2000, all the major activities, interventions and critical jobs in Port Harcourt Refinery have been done by Chrome, Offor pointed out that the fact that the refinery is still running today is partly because of the jobs being done by Chrome.
He stressed that 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.
While identifying vandalism and lack of supply of crude oil as the twin-evils that contributed largely to the problems of the refineries, he said: “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”.
The Chrome Group boss further disclosed that crude oil was currently being supplied to Port Harcourt Refinery through marine vessels because of vandalism of pipelines.
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