Posted by Oil Minister Heineken Lokpobiri has declared that if the deadline for rebuilding the Port Harcourt and Warri crude oil refineries is missed, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited should be held responsible.
After the recent ministerial retreat in Abuja, the minister revealed this information to the press.
He emphasized that NNPCL had guaranteed him that phase 1 of the work will be delivered by the December 2023 timeframe for completing the refinery renovation.
The rest of the refinery renovation, he said, will be finished by the end of the year.
He stressed the significance of increasing the country’s crude oil output.
If you recall, the previous administration initiated the refinery’s restoration per the President’s direction. After touring the various refineries, I was informed that Port Harcourt may be divided into three distinct time periods.
By year’s end, then, Phase 1 will be complete. The NNPCL, not me, is in charge of rehabilitation; they told me so, and I’m holding them to account.
Warri refinery phase 1 completion is expected by year’s end, they claimed. The entire Kaduna refinery will be finished by the end of next year, and Port Harcourt’s Phases 2 and 3 would be ready by the end of the following year.
That’s what they claimed, therefore I’m holding them to account. If we are successful in rehabilitating those refineries by the end of the year, I think they will help increase our domestic refining capacity.
That’s why I claimed that restoring the refineries wouldn’t help if there wasn’t enough feedstock being produced. My task now is to increase output and figure out how to supply not just the large but also the modular refineries. These, he remarked, are the true labor-hiring establishments, and they will perform miracles.
The Minister and NNPCL have been adamant that the Port Harcourt Refining Company Limited (PHRC) and the Warri Refining and Petrochemical Company (WRPC) must resume operations by the end of 2023.