Despite several interventions made to reinvigorate the Federal Government owed Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Crude Oil Refinery facilities, seems to be no end in sight to the downward operational performance of Nigeria’s refineries since the beginning of 2017.
The latest monthly oil and gas report released by the national oil firm showed that the cumulative capacity utilisation of the nation’s 3 refineries dropped further from 12.73% in June to 11.94% in July 2017.
Kaduna Refining and Petrochemical Company has remained dormant for the 2 consecutive months as it processed no crude oil in the period under review.
Port Harcourt Refining Company and Warri Refining and Petrochemical Company, also performed far below expectation.
While the WRPC moved up marginally in its performance, processing 1.87 per cent of crude oil in July, as against the zero output it recorded in June, the PHRC’s capacity utilisation dropped from 26.98 per cent in June to 24.18 per cent in July.
Going by the data provided by the NNPC, no refinery was able to perform up to 30 per cent, as none of them could utilise up to half of the crude oil allocated to them in July this year, as had been the case in many other preceding months.
As part of plans to revamp the refineries, the NNPC on several occasions had stated that its 12 Business Focus Areas would help address the shortcomings at the facilities.
In September, the NNPC disclosed that it would shortly close down three of its refineries for a comprehensive rehabilitation aimed at bringing them back to their nameplate production capacities.
The NNPC’s Group Managing Director, Maikanti Baru, told reporters in Abuja that the shutdown of the refineries would allow the corporation to undertake their rehabilitation in ways that were different from what had been done in the past.
According to Baru, the refineries will come back on stream as new facilities when the corporation concludes the rehabilitation project ahead of the country’s plan to exit petroleum products importation in 2019.
“As you know, it has been the perception of the public that the repairs of the refineries are never done thoroughly. So this time, our intention is to shutdown the refineries when we are ready, and then fully bring them back to what they should be as new refineries,” the GMD had said.