Nigeria: Port Harcourt Refinery Completes Tam, Targets Five Million Litres Petrol Daily

With about 1.1 billion litres of petrol to cover 27 days, scarcity of petrol would end by the weekend, Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Dr. Joseph Dawha, said on Thursday, assuring that the nation's perennial fuel scarcity would be over soon.
The bigger picture according to him, is that the phased Turn-Around Maintenance (TAM) of the Port Harcourt Refinery has reached advanced stage, with production capacity of about five million litres of Premium Motor Spirit (petrol) daily, expected to begin by month end.

 

 

Dawha who addressed newsmen shortly after inspecting operations at the NNPC mega stations in Abuja, also disclosed that the phased TAM for the other refineries would be completed within 18-month period.
"We are carrying out phased implementation of rehabilitation of the refineries, what that means is that we are taking the refineries unit by unit and carrying out turn around maintenance. In other words the maintenance is being carried out on the run and we started this a couple of months ago. Most of the refineries have advanced to a certain stage whereby they would be operating very soon.
"For example, the Port Harcourt Refinery which has reached an advanced stage will start receiving crude by the end of this month and they will start contributing to the availability of products in the country.

          

"What we did was to draw up a programme whereby people outside will not notice what is happening in the refineries but we are carrying out turn around maintenance on the run. And it is simultaneously taking place in all the refineries.
"At the end of 18 months most of the refineries would have been rehabilitated to a certain level whereby they can actually process crude optimally to make contributions to the availability of products in the country," he added.
He noted that as the supplier of last resort, the NNPC is the only organisation bringing petrol into the country, and would continue to do so until the other marketers begin to import to supplement the corporation's effort.
"As at today, (Thursday), PPMC has PMS stock level of 1.1billion litres, representing 27 days sufficiency. This stock is excluding volumes with firmed delivery laycans (dates) within the next couple of days. With this level of stock we have intensified our vessels and trucking operations to ensure that PMS is available at our inland depots and retail outlets nationwide.
"In the past two days, evidence has begun to emerge as most of our stations are wet and the severity of the queues has started to reduce", he added.