Abuja, Jan. 9, 2023 – The rehabilitation of 60,000 barrels per day Port Harcourt Refinery has been completed and will begin production by the first quarter of 2023.
Chief Timipre Sylva, the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, said this in Abuja on Monday while presenting President Muhammadu Buhari Administration’s Scorecard (2015 – 2023).
“The rehabilitation of the 60,000 barrels per day is completed and it is going to be started in the first quarter,” he said.
Sylva said that the Dangote Refinery in which the NNPCL holds 20 per cent shares would also come on stream this year.
He said that their commencement of production would end the importation of petroleum products into Nigeria.
The minister also said Dangote Refinery had concluded its sourcing of feedstock (crude oil) with NNPCL, but the modular refineries were still negotiating their contracts for the stock in the bid to begin refining.
He said that the private refineries that had been completed needed to have a feedstock guarantee for them to commence production, and promised that by January the contracting process would have been completed for them to start production.
The minister said petrol subsidy was no longer sustainable for the Federal Government to keep paying the subsidy support.
Mallam Mele Kyari, the Chief Executive of Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), said that it was not practicable for the Port Harcourt refinery to start production in the last quarter of 2022 as promised.
Kyari said that rehabilitation of refineries normally took 42 months from the date of signing its contract.
According to him, since the rehabilitation is done in phases, the plan was to complete the activities by the last quarter of 2022, but it was not achievable.
“But it was not practicable. But we will start it up in the first quarter of 2023,” kyari said. (GBN)
