Port Harcourt Refining Company and the Warri Refining and Petrochemical Company are now producing a command volume of seven million litres of petrol daily, according to the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources and Group Managing Director, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu.
He announced that the PHRC now produces five million litres of Premium Motor Spirit, known as petrol, while the WRPC dishes out two million litres of the product daily.
The Minister made this known on Sunday in a statement while reopening the Bonny-Port Harcourt crude pipeline.
The minister said the NNPC had been able to recover the Escravos to Warri and Bonny to Port Harcourt crude supply pipelines, stressing that they were critical to the downstream oil sector.
Kachukwu said, “Port Harcourt is back in production; Warri is back in production; Kaduna, as of today, is receiving crude and will soon be back in production. Lagos is easing off now from fuel scarcity and Abuja is doing the same thing; and once Kaduna begins production, the North will see a lot of improvement.”
He said in order to manage the refineries properly and to enable them to compete favourable in the hydrocarbon value chain, a commercial governance model system had been introduced into the management.
He explained, “What we have done is to find a very creative way of bringing investors who will come in, work with our team here who have the skills, reactivate and upgrade facilities in these refineries.
“The investors will also help us to provide technical support and they will be paid through the flow out of refined products over a period of time, which is why we have also changed the refining model such that the refineries pay for their crude, so it goes into the Federation Account.”
Kachikwu added that the refineries would sell their products to both the Nigerian Petroleum Marketing Company and the marketers.
He maintained that the government would not sell the refineries against claims in some quarters.
“We are not inviting foreign partners to take over the refineries; we do not have the funds. Even now that they are working, they are probably working at about 60 per cent or below capacity; so, you need to upgrade these refineries and get them to a level where they will operate at 90 per cent capacity or more,” the minister said.
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