by Lekan Olanrewaju

The Group Executive Director (GED), Refining and Petrochemical of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Philip Chukwu, in Kaduna, on Tuesday, announced that the three refineries in Warri, Port Harcourt and Kaduna have been revived and are now running.

“We have seen the Kaduna refinery increase production from a very low level to what we have now, about three million litres of petrol daily,” he said. “Let me commend the managing directors of the three refineries on what they have done.”

“As we speak today, all the three fluid catalytic cracking units (FCCUs) are working in the refineries.” he continued. “And this is the first time this has happened after about 14 years,”.

“Kaduna refinery is now working perfectly well, we have tested the equipment for over a month now and the condition is perfect,” he said.

The Managing Director of the Kaduna Refining and Petrochemical Company, Bankole Ayodele, also spoke, saying that the Kaduna refinery is to refine about 50,000 litres of foreign crude daily to augment the three million litres of petrol (Premium Light Spirit or PMS) it had been producing in the last few weeks.

“The KPRC has two components. One is for [refining] foreign crude, and the other for domestic crude,” he said. “The plant for domestic crude is already running and we produce about three million litres of PMS daily.”

“Before now, we were producing about 1.5 million litres per day of PMS,” he continued. “Now some parts of the plant that were shut over 10 years ago are back on stream, and on the overall we produce at about 73 percent capacity.”

“All the facilities for the foreign crude component have been restreamed. The only problem is that the platform on which we receive foreign crude at the Escravos platform at Warri is bad now. But we have contacted Chevron to help us handle it. They have finished their investigation and would soon hand over the report and their advice to us.”

This is certainly great news, no?