Kaduna refinery restarts production

Kaduna Refinery and Petrochemical Company, which has the capacity
to refine 110,000 barrels of crude oil a day, restarted production on
Saturday after it was closed for months for repairs.

The managing director, Pipelines and Products marketing Company,
Esther Nnamdi-Ogbue, said on Sunday that the plant, which was
closed in September, came back on stream ahead of the December
deadline for Nigeria’s four refineries to return to full production.
The group managing director of the Nigerian National Petroleum
Corporation, NNPC, Ibe Kachikwu, had issued a 90-day ultimatum to
the managements of the four refineries shortly after his appointment
last August.
Mrs. Nnamdi-Ogbue said the Kaduna plant, which is currently
undergoing a test run of its production lines, is expected to commence
trucking of petrol by the end of next week.
“Kaduna refinery came back on stream on Saturday as scheduled and
is running,” the PPMC boss told PREMIUM TIMES on Sunday, via text
message.
“PMS (Premium Motor spirit, also called petrol) should be available
for trucking by the end of the week. The refinery is expected to
produce an average of about 1.6 million litres of PMS daily once in
full operation,” she said.
Prior to its closure in September, Kaduna refinery had stopped
working for most part of the year, except briefly in July and August,
when its utilisation capacity dropped to about 2.6 per cent and 10.5
per cent respectively, according the NNPC monthly operational report
for October.
On Friday, Mrs. Nnamdi-Ogbue said resumption of production in
other refineries would follow before the end of the year, first by the
210,000 bpd-capacity Port Harcourt refinery shut-down since October.
The 125,000 bpd-capacity Warri refinery, which was closed since
September for repairs, would be the last to come back on stream,
according to the resumption timeline expected to see all the refineries
come back on before the end of the year.
The restart of production at the Kaduna refinery should be a cheering
news for Nigerians, who have endured weeks of scarcity of petroleum
products.
Part of the problem is because PPMC is currently saddled with the
responsibility of importing and supplying 100 per cent of the average
40 million litres daily national fuel consumption capacity, as none of
the major and independent oil marketers is involved in the fuel
importation programme in the country at the moment.
Before now, the PPMC and the other oil marketers used to split the
responsibility of importing fuel at the ratio of 52:48.
But, with the backlog of unpaid fuel subsidy and accumulated foreign
exchange differential, the oil marketers had opted out of further
importation, leaving it to the PPMC.