Thin rays of hope eclipsed by clouds of doubt are in the air once again following the umpteenth announcement that the long comatose Port Harcourt Refinery which has an installed capacity of 210,000bpd will resume production next month (August).
The last few resumption announcements went unfulfilled while the refinery which has been moribund since 2019 has generated repair bills in excess of $1.5 billion.
Repairs to Nigeria’s three refineries, Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna are expected to stem the current trend of refined products importation and foreign exchange expenditures and possibly lower the cost of refined products, especially petrol, in the local market.
Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC), Mele Kyari, had said on Monday that the Port Harcourt Refinery will resume production early in August.
Kyari, speaking during a session at the National Assembly where economic stakeholders appeared before the Senate Committee on Finance, led by lawmaker Sani Musa, said the operationalisation of the refinery is a significant step towards making Nigeria a net exporter of petroleum products by December.
He further said all necessary measures had been put in place to ensure Nigeria achieves an oil production level of two million barrels per day (bpd) within a few months.
Kyari clarified that while the Kaduna refinery is not expected to be operational before December, both the Warri and Kaduna refineries will commence operations by the end of the year.
“We have already seen growth in our oil and gas production because of certain actions that Mr. President personally took, and also the very mere truth that we have also declared a war on production activities, and this is yielding the required results,” Kyari said.
“The combination of these two has now seen us restoring production in our country, and we believe that, as the Honorable minister has said, we will soon hit the target of two million barrels oil production per day,” he added.
But there are doubts that the Port Harcourt Refinery will resume production as announced this time, worsened by rising claims that dubious international groups working hand-in-glove with locals are deliberately conspiring to ensure that the nation’s petroleum refineries do not work, ensuring that Nigeria continues to import refined fuels, sustain foreign jobs and economies and pay dearly in scarce foreign exchange.
Officials of the recently launched Dangote Petroleum Refinery have also made similar claims.
Nigeria spent more than N11.35 trillion naira ($25 billion) on fixing the country’s three moribund refineries, Warri, Port Harcourt and Kaduna in the past 10 years, the last parliament said in a report, calling for a forensic audit of the matter.
Despite the huge amounts spent to rehabilitate the refineries, they were producing in fits and starts and eventually went moribund altogether.
