Refinery rehabilitation: NNPC tasks contractor on project completion

The Nigerian National Petroleum corporation (NNPC) has tasked the Contractor rehabilitating the Port Harcourt Refineries Companies (PHRC) to ensure completion of the project at the estimated time frame.

The Group Managing Director, Malam Mele Kyari disclosed this at the kick off meeting of the Rehabilitation of PHRC, in Port Harcourt, on Thursday.

Our correspondent reports that the meeting signified the take off of the rehabilitation project.

The PHRC operates two refineries; the old refinery with a nameplate capacity of 60,000 barrels per stream day (bpsd) and new refinery with an installed capacity of 150,000 bpsd.

The two refineries bring the Port Harcourt Refinery’s combined crude processing capacity to 210,000bpsd.

He said that Nigerians are willing to see the refineries up and running to help boost local refining capacity in the country.

“We shall from time to time visit to see the progress of work outside, and sooner than later we shall come on to commission the work.

“We will support all that is necessary to be done to expedite the rehabilitation, we are ready to support your contract to secure the necessary approvals internally within Nigeria,” he said.

Kyari, who was represented by the Chief Financial Officer, Mr Umar Ajiya, added that the NNPC would provide support to meet the desire of Nigerians to see NNPC refining Petroluem products.

He noted that the corporation was happy that TECHNIMONT SPA was on board for the project and called on all stakeholders to support the rehabilitation exercise.

He reiterated that the funding of the project would come from the government and financiers with close monitoring of Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission, Ministry of Finance, NEITI, among others.

“This is the most transparent contract and we expect the contractor to be excellent with the work.

“We expect 90 per cent operational values after the rehabilitation of the refineries in production capacity,” he added.

In his remarks, the Chief Operating Officer, Refineries and PetrolChemicals, Yinusa Yakubu, congratulated TECHNIMONT for emerging the contractor for the project.

He said that what happened on April 6th was signing of the EPC but the kick off meeting signified the beginning of the rehabilitation of the refinery.

“Today is technical meeting and it signifies the start of the project and starting from today, we will be having progress reports,” he said.

According to him, out of the 3000 expected employees for the project, only 70 expatriates are expected to be engaged, the rest will be Nigerians.
Commenting on the role of the host communities, the Managing Director PHRC, Dikko Ahmed, assured that they remained major stakeholder in the project.

“We have met with the host communities, we just don’t want them to create employment, we want them to be partners in this project and we can do it in various ways.

“Employment, they will have priority in that but there are other things they will require that we will be ready to do for them as we journey into this project,” he said.

He noted that the communities would partner with the contractor to have a peaceful environment for the project.

In his contribution, Masu Alberto, the representative of the contractor, Technimont SPA said that the journey started in 2017 with integrity test of the refinery.

“In 2019, we did work on it and then now we are deploying a good number of engineers. Due to the pandemic, it’s quite challenging deploying people but we have to trudge on,” he said.

He added that the technical building would be refurbished, just as the firefighting and deluge sprinkler systems will be replaced.

He added that 24 off site tanks would be refurbished, among other components.