Victor Ezeja
The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) has announced that it wants to engage credible private firms with capacity to operate and maintain the Warri Refining and Petrochemical Company and the Kaduna Refining and Petrochemical Company.
NNPCL made this known in a statement on its official X handle on Thursday. The national oil company said the move is to “ensure reliability and sustainability to meet the nation’s fuel supply and energy security obligations.”
Join our WhatsApp ChannelIt therefore invited Operations and Maintenance (O&M) Companies with capacity to undertake the job to submit tenders.
The company said the O&M tender for WRPC and KRPC will pass through a three-stage tender process.
It said the contract scope will cover long term and short term production/operations planning, production and operations execution, monitoring, reporting and optimization of operations, maintenance planning, and environmental management among others.
Warri Refinery
The Warri Refinery located at Warri in Delta State, is a 125,000 bpd facility commissioned in 1978. The refinery complex includes a petro-chemical plant commissioned in 1988 with production capacities of 13,000 MTA of polypropylene and 18,000 MTA of carbon black.
Kaduna Refinery
The Kaduna Refinery was put into service in 1980 with a 50,000 barrels per day capacity. It was meant to supply petroleum products to Northern Nigeria. A second 50,000 bpd crude train for the manufacture of lubricating oils (lubes) was added in 1983, increasing the capacity to 100,000 B/D. The initial crude train was enlarged to 60,000 bpd capacity in 1986. The refinery’s nameplate capacity has now reached 110,000 bpd thanks to the expansions.
READ ALSO: Kaduna Residents Stage Protest As Alleged Toxic Chemical Spill From Refinery Destroys Farms
The two refineries have not been producing refined petroleum products for years now.
Refineries Rehabilitation
The federal government had awarded contracts for the rehabilitation of the refineries.
In 2021, the federal government approved $1.48 billion for the rehabilitation of Kaduna and Warri refineries.
According the then Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Mr Timipre Sylva, $897,678,800 million was set aside for Warri refinery, while $586,902,256 million was for repair of Kaduna refinery.
Sylva said then that the full rehabilitation will be completed in 33 months.
The current Minister of State Petroleum Resources, Heineken Lokpobiri, had during an inspection tour of the Kaduna Refinery in October 2023, assured that the rehabilitation work would be completed by the end of 2024.
Kaduna and Warri refineries are part of the four dysfunctional refineries in Nigeria that have not produced any refined products for many years.
This is even as the country continues to spend millions of naira every on turn around maintenance of the facilities.
A House of Representatives ad-hoc committee on the state of refineries in the country, had in June 2023, released a report which revealed that the rehabilitation of the Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna refineries gulped N11.35 trillion in 13 years, beginning from 2010.
Nigerian have continued to experience scarcity and high cost of petroleum products as the country relies heavily on importation of refined products.
Victor Ezeja is a passionate journalist with seven years of experience writing on economy, politics and energy. He holds a Master's degree in Mass Communication.
