KPMG Central Africa announced on its website that Nigeria has mobilised $1.5 billion to renovate its refinery located in Port Harcourt, River State in the South of the country.
These finances are gotten from parts of loans taken from UBA bank and Afrixembank, while the other part is from the country’s public revenue. The rehabilitation of the refinery was awarded to an Italian specialist in the civil engineering and energy sectors, Tecnimont SPA. According to the London Agency S&P Global Platts specialised in publishing information on the energy and raw material sectors, this project will be executed in three phases over a period of 44 months. The first phase should be completed within 18 months while the duration of the other two phases have not been made public.
The rehabilitation project of the Port Harcourt Refinery is concluded two years after its shut down. The refiner had suspended activities due to the dilapidated nature of installations and equipment which affected the quality of work environment and caused many recurrent technical difficulties and in the process increased operating cost. The Nigerian government thus decided to invest in its replacement. They have even decided to extend this rehabilitation to other refineries like that of Warri still in the South of the country and the Kaduna refinery located in the North.
According to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), the reopening of this factory will help increase the production of the said refinery and public refineries should surpass the 2% of their current capacity. As for the production capacity, the Port Harcourt refinery produced before its shut down 210 000 barrels/day while those of Warri and Kaduna produced 110 000 barrels/day and 125 000 barrels/day respectively. In all, the country had a daily production capacity of 445 000 barrels per day and till date the Port Harcourt Refinery still remains the largest refining plant in Nigeria.