FG selling crude with no allocation for local refineries since Jan 15 — KRPC

Investigation by National Daily have revealed the low capacity productivity of all four national refineries which was against his 2015 electoral promises, indications have emerged that one of the causes of the current fuel scarcity is non supply of crude to the refineries.

National Daily gathered weekend that the Kaduna Refining and Petrochemical Company (KRPC) was shut down on Jan. 15, due to the non availability of crude oil.

The Executive Director, Services (EDS), of KRPC, Dr. Abdullahi Idris, who dropped the hint on Sunday in Kaduna, said the refinery, whose Fuel Plant was commissioned in 1980, was functioning at 60 per cent capacity “but shut down on January 15 due to unavailability of crude oil”.

According to him, the Lubes Plant of KRPC, was commissioned in 1983 and the Petrochemical Plant in 1988. According to him, before it was shutdown, the KRPC produced four million litres of petrol (PMS) per day. Idris explained that the plant was also producing 2.5 million litres of (AGO) Diesel and 1.6 million litres of Kerosene per day.

Idris averred that the Plant had undergone a Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) in 2013 and currently had a workforce of 1,004 staff.

National Daily also gathered that the inability to supply crude to Kaduna may not be unconnected with a strange decision to sell all crude without recourse to the percentage statutorily earmarked for local refining.

The indication, according experts include that fuel and related products scarcity may continue throughout this month and beyond.

Efforts to get further explanations from the NNPC failed at press time.

It would be recalled that the Port Harcourt refinery is Nigeria’s oldest, built in 1965, nine years after crude was first found under the marshy soil and creeks of the delta, where the Niger river meanders to the Gulf of Guinea. Refineries in nearby Warri and Kaduna in the north central region were built in the years that followed, while a new plant was added to the same site in Port Harcourt in 1989. In recent years, however, it became a byword for corruption, a murky, state-run body where billions of dollars in revenue apparently disappeared.

The Warri Refining and petrochemical company (WRPC) was incorporated in 1988 following the merger of the Warri Refinery and Ekpan Petrochemical Plants.

WRPC, one of the subsidiaries of the NNPC, produces at installed capacity of 125,000 Barrel per Stream Day (BPSD).

Efforts to find out whether WRPC is still refining failed, but some of the workers who spoke to National Daily described current activities at the plant as negligible.