The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited is struggling to finish the turnaround maintenance at the Port Harcourt refinery, according to insiders. This is despite many pledges to finish the rehabilitation of the state-owned refineries.
The combined crude processing capacity of the two refineries owned and operated by the Port Harcourt Refining Company (PHRC) is 210,000 barrels per stream day (bpsd). The old plant has a capacity of 60,000 bpsd, while the new facility has an installed capacity of 150,000 bpsd.
Insiders told The Cable that attempts to start up operations at the refinery have encountered major obstacles.
According to a source, the refinery’s obsolescence, corrosion, lack of baseline data for structural integrity verifications, and lack of as-built data to assist engineers in drawing on the facility’s history have prevented the engineering, procurement, and construction contractor from completely revamping it.
Insiders close to the rehabilitation efforts said since the refinery is yet to produce petroleum products, the NNPC is considering various options to ensure that it does not remain moribund.
According to documents seen by TheCable, one of the options available to the national oil company is to retrofit the refinery into a blending plant.
An oil blending facility can be used to blend re-refined oil—used motor oil that has been cleaned of water, gasoline, and debris—with additives to produce final lubricant goods, but it lacks the capacity to refine....Read Full Article [Click Here>]
A PHRC representative contacted a representative at NNPC Trading Limited, a NNPC subsidiary, regarding the gasoline delivery in a note dated August 27.
“PHRC is desirously[sic] of procuring high RON gasoline from your company to blend with Naphtha produced from our 60,000bpd refinery (Area 5 plants),” the document reads.
The NNPC trading official was ordered to provide two cargoes of gasoline with RON 94 specifications by the PHRC representative.
The goods was to be delivered to the Okrika Jetty in Port Harcourt in the second week of September and the first week of October, respectively, with a requested cargo size of 28 kilotonnes (KT) each.
“Due to the draft limitations at PHRC Okrika Jetty (9.2 meters) the maximum cargo size is 30KT,” the PHRC representative said in the correspondence.
The national oil company, denied plans to turn the refinery into a blending plant when TheCable contacted them. According to the NNPC, the company’s business model is not compatible with a blending plant.
“Similarly, there are no plans to import off-spec RON 94 for blending. As for the PH refinery, NNPC Ltd, together with its engineers and partners, is working tirelessly to complete the commissioning of the old refinery, while rehabilitation efforts for the new refinery are still underway,” Sonenye, spokesperson of the national oil company, said.
