NNPC Explains Why Government Spends $1.5 billion

Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) explains why Government spends $1.5 billion on Port Harcourt refinery after receiving comments from Nigerians, NNPC defend Federal Government about the reasons $1.5 billion will be spent on Port Harcourt refinery alone.

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has explained why Government spends $1.5 billion on Port Harcourt refinery compared to other projects. Many Nigerians have spoken on different platforms both negatively and positively about the “outrageous” amount the Government is spending on Port Harcourt refinery alone without having enough facts to back up their opinion.

Port Harcourt being the major supplier of petroleum; supplying 210,000 barrels per day capacity refinery has reported that these supplies are not for transforming maintenance but complete rehabilitation.

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These disclosure was made by Mele Kyari (Group Managing Director of NNPC). He also revealed that the refinery will work more effectively after the completion of the rehabilitation programme.

Kyari said;

We are not doing turnaround maintenance, we are doing rehabilitation of the refinery, and it is very different; it means that we are replacing certain major components.

We are introducing some items that ordinarily we won’t need to do in turnaround maintenance and there are major shifts in the status of the plant that we have to do and it is not done during turnaround maintenance.

During rehabilitation, by the 18th month, part of this plant will begin to produce, particularly the gasoline plants. In rehabilitation, we normally don’t shut down the plant completely, we repair a segment of it, and then it starts working, and then, you move to the next segment

Then he added;

You continue to scale up and that is why, within the four-year period, the contractor would have completely left your premises. What it means in a technical sense is that in 18 months, we will see production coming from that plant; we will follow it plant by the plant until we are completely done.

All these explanations from NNPC GMD has definitely given us a clear doubt about why the Federal Government had to spend so much on Port Harcourt refinery.