Page 10 - AfrOil Week 31 2021

AfrOil PERFORMANCE AfrOil

NNPC has repeatedly said that its full 445,000 about the same time.”
barrel per day (bpd) capacity across its Port Har- He added: “Very soon, we will do the same
court, Kaduna and Warri refineries was shut in [as at Port Harcourt] for Warri. Completion may
to prepare for an overhaul, but this was only be 40 months away, but production will start
kicked off last month. much earlier than that.” These payments covered
In a press release, the company said: “The all the arrears owed to MPN, it said. However,
declining operational performance is attrib- it also stated that NNPC still owed $917.2mn
utable to ongoing revamping of the refineries, to SPDC, $297.23mn to NAOC, $215.58mn to
which is expected to further enhance capacity TEPNG and $34.78mn to CNL.
utilisation once completed.” Nigeria’s federal government, along with
In mid-July, NNPC said that works on Port NNPC, began negotiating payments on the
Harcourt were in full swing, noting that the overdue cash calls after President Muhammadu
first refined products following the repairs are Buhari took office in 2015.
expected to be delivered by September next The negotiations resulted in an agreement
year. It will come back on stream in stages, with that reduced the total amount owed by around
the full project not anticipated to be completed $1.7bn, and NNPC began paying the balance
until late 2024, when it should reach 90% of its down in 2017. ™
210,000 bpd nameplate capacity.
Meanwhile, NNPC has yet to announce
firm plans for the rehabilitation of Kaduna and
Warri, with host communities this week urging
the company to fix the latter facility as quickly
as possible.
The Itsekiri host communities urged NNPC’s
Warri Refining and Petrochemical Co. (WRPC)
subsidiary to carry out an extensive clean-up of
the four surrounding rivers. According to local
media reports, they accused WRPC and Nige-
ria Gas Co. of having polluted the rivers since
December 2019.
In June, NNPC’s group managing direc-
tor Mele Kyari said: “The Warri and Kaduna
(refineries) will catch up with the Port Har-
court process because we have learnt from the
Port Harcourt mistakes we made. So we are
hastening the process so that they can run con-
currently. In the end, we will deliver all of them NNPC owns four refineries (Image: Journal of Energy and Power Engineering)

POLICY
Eni loses appeal of Ghanaian court ruling

on setting aside 30% of Sankofa earnings

GHANA ITALY’S Eni has lost its appeal of a previous owned Ghanaian upstream operator, on the
court decision ordering its local subsidiary, Eni unitisation of the Sankofa and Afina oilfields.
Ghana Exploration, to turn over some of the Ghana’s Energy Ministry ordered Eni and
money it was earning from the sale of oil from Springfield to combine Afina with the adjacent
the offshore Sankofa field. Sankofa field last year, citing a seismic study
The Italian major had hoped to overturn this conducted by Ghana National Petroleum Corp.
ruling, which was issued by the Commercial (GNPC) that purportedly showed the two
Court in Accra in late June. However, the Com- sites to be part of the same structure. The sites
mercial Court of Second Instance decided on have “identical reservoir and fluid properties,”
July 26 that Eni was still obligated to deposit 30% Energy Minister John-Peter Amewu wrote in a
of all earnings derived from the sale of Sankofa letter to the two companies at the time.
oil into a joint escrow account. Accordingly, Eni Last week, Springfield’s CEO Kevin Okyere
must leave a portion of its oil revenues in this hailed the court’s decision and said that his com-
account until it reaches agreement with Spring- pany continued to favour the Ghanaian govern-
field Exploration and Production, a privately ment’s call for the unitisation of the two fields.

P10 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 31 04•August•2021