Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, Joseph Dawha, has disclosed that the Port Harcourt Refining Company Limited will start refining crude oil, at least, up to 80 per cent capacity from July 2015.
Dawha made this known on Thursday in Abuja after he inspected some petrol stations in the capital city.
He also said other refineries will soon begin to refine crude oil, stating that the rehabilitation on them have reached advanced stages.
The NNPC boss assured Nigerians that the June 13 deadline by the Federal Government and oil marketers in the country to end scarcity of Premium Motor Spirit, PMS, commonly called petrol, is still on course.
According to him, “We are carrying out phased implementation of rehabilitation of the refineries. We are taking the refineries unit by unit and carrying out turnaround maintenance on them. So in other words, the maintenances are being carried out on the run and we started a couple of months ago.”
He further said that, “Most of the refineries have advanced to a certain stage where they will be able to operate very soon. For example, the Port Harcourt refinery, which has reached an advanced stage, will start receiving crude by end of this month and then of course will start contributing to the available products in the country.”
Dawha also disclosed that, “At the end of the target 18 months, most of the refineries would have been rehabilitated to such level where they can actually process crude optimally to make contributions to the availability of products in the country.”
Reacting to claims by some Nigerians that the four refineries in the country have been neglected, the NNPC GMD said, “No, farther from that.” He said, “We hope that at the end of the exercise, these refineries will be fully back into operation and we will minimise some of the problems we have with importation.”
