The Group Chief Executive Officer (GCEO) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), has the company was losing about N500 million every month on the Port Harcourt refinery.
Ojulari disclosed this spoke in Abuja when he received a delegation of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN), led by its President, Festus Osifo.
He said rehabilitating the refinery has been challenging due to years of neglect.
“When you fix one thing, the other thing is still there. So, it’s been very difficult to get it,” Ojulari said.
“When I resumed, one of the first priorities I focused on was the refineries, to have a quick review, to see whether we could quickly fix it.
“What I found is that we were losing between N300 million to N500 million on a monthly basis in the overall refinery.
“Let’s take Port Harcourt. We were pumping about 950,000 barrels as cargo to go to the refinery. You know that kind of price.”
Ojulari said when the NNPCL looked at the inputs and outputs, the mass balance showed that less than 40 percent of what was going in was coming out.
“Then you also found that we were producing mid-grade product because only half of the refinery was working,” he said.
“The way the refinery is designed, the two parts are one. You hear old refinery, new refinery. That’s the wrong information.
“The way the refinery was designed, when the old refinery came forward was that the old refinery was meant to feed into the new for the end product to be of the right standard to the market.”
…reported by the.cable.ng
