Kachikwu announces new date for refinery turn around

The Minister of State for Petroleum, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu has revealed that the planned repair works on the refineries will happen a year later than expected as financing talk’s drags.

Dr. Kachikwu in an interview in Cape Town noted that funding is expected to be secured by December, with two years required to bring the plants closer to their full combined capacity of 445,000 barrels a day.

“It’s not likely to happen by the end of 2019 because the financing talks for the joint ventures took longer than expected,”

In a quest to advance the Federal Government’s commitment to end the importation of fuel into the country by December, 2019, the NNPC in May, 2018, confirmed that 13 firms have been given license for the establishment of modular refineries, out of 35 firms that indicated interests.

It would be recalled that in 2017, the NNPC shut down three of the nation’s refineries for the refineries at Warri, Port Harcourt and Kaduna to be brought back to their original production capacities, which is ultimately geared to halt the country’s importation of petroleum products come 2019.

The corporation, in January, 2018, settled for interfacing with the original builders of the refineries in Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna, to return their capacity utilisation to about 90% by 2019. The installed capacities of each of the refineries stood at 445,000 barrels per day on delivery, but in the last 11 years, they have operated far below the capacity upon yearly repairs with billions of dollars.