The pressure on the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to devalue the naira due to dwindling foreign exchange reserves, is likely to ease with the resumption of operations of the Port Harcourt and Warri refineries, THISDAY’s investigations have revealed.
This is coming as the managing directors of the refineries will today present status reports on the plants to the management of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
NNPC operates three refineries with a combined capacity of 445,000 barrels per day (bpd). They are the 210,000bpd Port Harcourt refinery, the 125,000bpd Warri refinery and petrochemical plant, and the 110,00bpd Kaduna refinery and petrochemical plant.
The commencement of operations at the Port Harcourt and Warri plants, will boost the country’s local refining output and reduce the volume of petroleum products imported into the country, thus easing pressure on the naira and foreign exchange demand by at least 50 to 60 per cent.
According to CBN data, fuel imports alone account for 35 per cent of forex demand in the market.
Officially, the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) puts Nigeria’s consumption of petrol at 40 million litres daily.
However, several industry analysts have put the nation’s actual consumption of petrol at 30 million to 35 million litres a day, claiming that the figure had been inflated due to the subsidy regime that encourages smuggling across Nigeria’s borders.
The subsidy regime, notwithstanding, almost all of the country’s petroleum requirement for over a decade has been imported because of the suboptimal performance of the nation’s three refineries, which have the capacity to meet about 50 per cent of the country’s fuel demand.
An official with one of the refineries informed THISDAY yesterday that with the commencement of operations of the Port Harcourt and Warri plants, Nigeria’s over-dependence on imported products would be drastically reduced.
He said with the emergence of President Muhammadu Buhari, who has a zero-tolerance for corruption, the refineries, which were intentionally kept moribund despite the repairs carried out by the management of the plants with external contractors, have suddenly come alive.
When contacted, NNPC spokesman, Mr. Ohi Alegbe, confirmed at the weekend that both the Port Harcourt and Warri refineries had commenced operations.
Alegbe, however, did not provide further details on the output from both plants. But the refinery official, who preferred not to be named, told THISDAY that the managing directors of the plants would today present status reports on the refineries, starting with the Port Harcourt plant, to NNPC’s management.
“The situation reports will determine the exact state of operations. Until this is done, we cannot give you details of the volume of products being produced.
“If your car is down for several months, you have to test-run the engine before you go to town with the news that you have repaired your car. That is what we are doing now,” he said.
Also confirming the resumption of operations at the Port Harcourt and Warri refineries at the weekend, the Chairman of PPP Fluid Mechanics, Capt. Hosa Okunbor, said his firm, which has the contract to convey crude oil to both refineries with its very large crude carrier (VLCC) had commenced the supply of crude oil to the plants.
He said: “Currently, we lift 950,000 barrels to the Warri refinery twice a month and approximately 1.6 million barrels twice a month to the Port Harcourt refinery using our VLCC.
“We then use our shuttle vessels for lightering or ship-to-ship (STS) transshipment to the Port Harcourt and Warri refinery jetties where the crude oil is discharged to the tanks there.”
However, he added that the movement of his company’s shuttle vessels into the Escravos channel to discharge crude oil for the Warri refinery was proving to be a challenge due to the shallow draft in the channel.
“If we can move crude oil to the Warri refinery with ease, more crude oil could be pumped through the NNPC System 2C pipeline to the Kaduna refinery which could also refine products for northern Nigeria.
“But our operations are slowed down by the draft, so we will have to make a case to the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) to dredge the Escravos channel to ease movement in the area,” Okunbo said. (Thisdaylive).
