The renewed drive to raise the productivity of all four national refineries is getting the best attention.
This is coming from the latest hint dropped by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) Group Managing Director, Maikanti Baru, who averred agreements on the potential financiers for the refineries were being fine-tuned.
He noted that the endorsement of the NNPC Board would be sought this month when approved companies are named.
According to Ndu Ughamadu in a statement, “We are pushing towards the final selection of our financiers and we expect that when that is done, we’ll get the agreements and present them to our board meeting this month to secure its endorsement; and once we have the funding, we will start the rehabilitation of the refineries towards a 90 per cent capacity utilisation per stream day before the end of 2019.”
Continuing, Baru said the corporation was also encouraging new refining capacities to come on board, adding that there were two consortia that had indicated interest to co-locate refineries in Warri and Port Harcourt.
“NNPC would provide whatever utility services the companies might require, such as power, processed steam, water and land, stressing that the corporation had agreed in broad terms on areas of collaboration to fast-track the development.
“I am happy to inform you that progress has been made, up to the level of an acceptable detailed engineering design and we are in the process of mobilising some of the refineries already identified for installation in Nigeria,” the GMD said.