Technical Hitch Stalls Resumption Of Production At PH Refinery

A fire incident and some technical hitches have led to the shutting down of the Old Port Harcourt Refinery, which was long due to resume production of petroleum products.
Technical completion of the old refinery was achieved in December 2023 after which a plan was enrolled for it to begin production of petroleum products within the first quarter of 2024. But that never occurred.
Investigations by National Point indicated that after the technical completion of the old refinery, the plant was started for test running but it was brought down after a section of it caught fire.
Engineers working on the plant, National Point gathered, discovered a lot of problems with the 62-year-old plant, especially the fact that many of the parts needed to be replaced instead of being cleaned and restored.
The situation has caused the Federal Government a lot of embarrassment following pressures from the public that had long been told that the refinery would soon come into operations.
The situation now, National Point furthered gathered, has put the government in a tight corner as what is now required to put the refinery back on stream was not captured in the contract.
But the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPCL, has explained that the problem of the old plant has to do with age.
NNPCL’s Chief Corporate Communications Officer, Olufemi Soneye, admitted the rehabilitation has faced risks and challenges being a brown field project.
He said the commissioning of critical equipment and processing units had begun after the mechanical completion of the refinery.
He said, “You may recall that mechanical completion of the PHRC revamp was successfully achieved several months ago, marking a significant milestone in the project. Following this, we began the commissioning of critical equipment and process units.
“However, as is common with brownfield projects of this scale and complexity, we encountered unforeseen risks and challenges.”
Soneye however said that work has resumed to complete the project. “These issues have since been effectively resolved, and commissioning activities have resumed.
“Work is being carried out around the clock to ensure the successful completion of this critical project,” he told our correspondent.” But he did not give any new date for the resumption of production of the refinery.
NNPCL has declined giving new resumption dates after several promises in the past had failed.
The old Port Harcourt refinery was inaugurated 62 years ago with a capacity to refine 35,000 barrels of crude oil a day. It was later debottlenecked to process 60,000 barrels of crude oil a day.
The refinery became idle a few years after the new refinery was inaugurated in 1989. It was shut down in 1992 to undergo turnaround maintenance. After a long rehabilitation programme by the Italian firm, Soimi SPA, an attempt was made to start the refinery in 1994. But a fire incident occurred and it was shut down finally until 2021 when the $1.5 billion contract for the rehabilitation of both the old and new refineries was awarded to Maire Tecnimont SPA of Italy.
Though the entire contract for the rehabilitation was supposed to be for four years, the prognosis show that the 2025 deadline may not be met.