Timipre Sylva: Refinery rehabilitation exercise is still in progress

Timipre Sylva, minister of state for petroleum resources, says the refinery rehabilitation exercise across the country is in its final stages.

Sylva was speaking at an interactive session with members of the Nigeria Guild of Editors (NGE) in Abuja on Tuesday.

He said the ministry of petroleum resources has completed the plant equipment inspection and integrity study conducted in December 2019 as part of phase one of the Port Harcourt refinery rehabilitation.

“The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), on December 1, 2020, opened bids for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contracts for the rehabilitation of the refinery,” the minister explained.

He said the ministry unveiled the refinery rehabilitation roadmap aimed at boosting Nigeria’s local refining capacity and transforming the country from being a net importer of petroleum products to a net exporter of the commodity in 2018.

“Under the roadmap, the existing refineries were to be rehabilitated, greenfield refineries developed and modular refining co-located,” he said.

“Pursuant to the roadmap, the ministry had continued to collaborate with the private sector to increase the country’s domestic refining capacity by issuing five licenses and permits for refineries with a combined refining capacity of over 623,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd) to be completed latest by 2021.

“They include the over 600,000 barrels per day (bpd) capacity Dangote Refinery; the 10,000bpd Niger Delta Petroleum Resources Refinery (NDPR); the 7000 bpd OPAC Refinery; the 5,000bpd Waltersmith Refining and Petrochemical Company Limited; and the 1,000bpd Edo Refinery.”

In November, Mele Kyari, the group managing director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), said the nation’s four refineries were deliberately shut down because their operations were no longer sustainable.