Kaduna refinery stays idle for 12 months, others wobble

The Kaduna Refining and Petrochemical Company did not refine any crude oil from February 2018 to January this year, the latest data obtained from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation showed.

The Port Harcourt Refining Company was idle from July 2018 to January this year.

The last time the PHRC was functional was June last year when it processed 237,875 metric tonnes of crude, while the KRPC processed 21,855MT in January 2018.

An analysis of NNPC’s latest monthly financial and operations report for January 2019 also showed that of the country’s three refineries managed by the corporation, only the Warri Refining and Petrochemical Company was able to process some volumes of crude oil from January 2018 to January this year.

Between January 2018 and January 2019, the WRPC only recorded zero capacity utilisation in January, September and October, in 2018.

In January this year, the Warri refinery processed 104,459MT of crude and posted a capacity utilisation of 19.76 per cent.

The combined capacity utilisation of the refineries in January this year was put at 5.5 per cent.

President Muhammadu Buhari government had promised to increase the performance or output of the nation’s refineries to about 90 per cent by 2019. But this did not materialise during the first term of the President, which elapsed on Wednesday, May 29, 2019.

In May 2017, former junior minister of petroleum resources, Ibe Kachikwu, while speaking as a guest on BBC Hard Talk in London, vowed to resign if the country failed to attain self-sufficiency in the refining of petroleum products by 2019.

When asked to state the year that Nigeria would be self-sufficient in refining petroleum products, Kachikwu replied, “I have said 2019, and that is the target that I gave.”

On whether he would leave office if he failed to achieve the target, the minister replied, “Yes, of course. That is the reason why you are in government.”

The former minister, during the interview, revealed that the government’s target was to get the refineries working at 90 per cent operational capacity.

“Those refineries were down before the president came. Since coming, we’ve been able to get them back to produce seven million litres versus zero.

“That’s not the 90 per cent template but we’re now refurbishing the refineries.”