Page 10 - DMEA Week 49 2021

DMEA REFINING DMEA

Nigerian House promises timely

completion of Port Harcourt rehab

AFRICA MEMBERS of Nigeria’s House of Representa- six-month ‘integrity check’ in 2019, with fellow
tives’ Committee on Petroleum Downstream Italian firm Eni contracted as technical adviser.
this week vowed to monitor the progress of work This work included equipment inspection at the
to rehabilitate the country’s Port Harcourt refin- site, as well as “relevant engineering and plan-
ing complex to ensure timely completion. ning activities”.
During a visit to the facility, committee chair- Gaya’s comments appear to refer to the repair
man Dr Abdullahi Gaya said it was incumbent of the old refinery, known as Area 5, which is the
on him and his colleagues to ensure that govern- first part of the plan to allow first refined prod-
ment funds apportioned to the project were used ucts to be delivered by September next year.
appropriately to revive the decrepit facility. In October, Nigerian National Petroleum
The end of April 2022 has been set as the date Corp. (NNPC) executive director for refiner-
for the completion and Gaya said all efforts must ies and petrochemicals Mustapha Yakubu said:
be focused on ensuring the timeline is stuck to. “Everything has been put in place to ensure that
“We are here to see what they have done, even the project is delivered hitch-free and on sched-
though they said within 24 months they will be ule,” noting that the facility will return to at least
able to complete. We hope within that period 90% capacity when it resumes operation.
they will be able to finish it, but we promise our- Meanwhile, the company’s head of public
selves in the next three months, we will come affairs, Kennie Obateru, said in August that Tec-
back and see the progress for ourselves,” he said. nimont had already mobilised workers to the
The Port Harcourt Refining Co. (PHRC) site. “The work is progressing,” he said.
has a theoretical nameplate capacity of 210,000 “We said it will be completed within 18 to 44
barrels per day (bpd) but it has been shut down months when counting from April this year. By
completely since 2019 awaiting rehabilitation. 18 months, some part of the refinery will be pro-
This followed several years of operating at near ducing. The total rehabilitation job will be com-
zero utilisation. pleted in 44 months,” he added.
The Nigerian government secured a $1bn This week, PHRC managing director Ahmed
loan from Cairo-based African Export-Import Dikko said: “We have done enough and we are
Bank (Afreximbank) in February and awarded a still doing enough to make sure we meet that
$1.5bn engineering, procurement and construc- obligation to complete the whole refinery within
tion (EPC) contract to Italy’s Maire Tecnimont in 24 months, while we still working on other parts
April to return the refinery to 90% of its capacity of the refinery.
by 2023. The April 2022 target of the rehabilitation of
The Italian company had carried out a 50mn, the refinery is achievable.”™

P10 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 49 09•December•2021