The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation on Thursday announced the formal commencement of the first phase of the rehabilitation of the 210,000 barrels per day capacity Port Harcourt refinery.
Port
Harcourt refinery complex also houses the 60,000 barrels per day old
refinery that was built in 1965 and the 150,000 barrels per day new
refinery, inaugurated in 1989.
The Group Managing Director,
NNPC, Maikanti Baru, flagged-off the formal commencement of the
rehabilitation work on the facility at the premises of the refinery in
Port Harcourt on Thursday, 19 years after the last Turn Around
Maintenance exercise of the nation’s premier refining plant.
NNPC
Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division, Ndu Ughamadu, in a
statement issued in Abuja, said the project would be executed by
Milan-based Maire Tecnimont S.p.A, in collaboration with its Nigerian
affiliate, Tecnimont Nigeria.
NNPC said it was engaging Eni/NAOC
as Technical Advisor to support the rehabilitation of Port Harcourt
Refining Company and that NNPC/PHRC would leverage Eni’s extensive
refinery supply chain network and warehouses to procure critical
materials for the programme.
The corporation’s spokesperson noted
that the first phase of the rehabilitation contract, which would run
for six months, would involve detailed integrity check and equipment
inspection of the Port Harcourt refinery complex beginning from the end
of March 2019.
According to Ughamadu, the integrity test will
come as a forerunner to the second phase of the rehabilitation project
which entails a comprehensive revamp of the complex aimed at restoring
the refinery to a minimum of 90 per cent capacity utilisation.
He
noted that subject to the successful completion of the integrity
checks, Phase Two of the project would be executed on an Engineering
Procurement Construction basis by Tecnimont in collaboration with the
original builders of the plant, JGC of Japan.
Speaking on
behalf of the contractors, Antonio Vella, Chief Officer, Upstream, Eni,
said all the companies involved would deploy all available modern
resources to ensure effective upgrade of the plant.
Vella stated
that with the commitment of all parties involved, it was certain that
NNPC would be able to celebrate the revamp of the PHRC that would lead
to its full capacity utilisation on schedule and in full safety.
Speaking
on behalf of the workers’ unions, the Branch Chairman of the Petroleum
and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association, Odor Ayiri, and Chairman of
the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers, Dibiah Joseph,
jointly pledged the support of workers to ensuring a smooth turnaround
of the facility.
Recall that NNPC had to abandon its earlier
funding strategy by its DSDP Term Contractors/Consortia due to onerous
conditions demanded after more than 12 months of negotiations.
NNPC resorted to immediate direct funding from internal cash flows while it approached the financial markets for debt financing.
NNPC further segmented the rehabilitation to begin with Port Harcourt refinery complex and then progress to Warri and Kaduna refinery complexes using the same methodology.
Source:- Punchng
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