$1.5bn Repair: Doubts As FG Says Port Harcourt Refinery Ready Soon

The federal government has disclosed that the Port Harcourt refinery will begin work in December.

Timipre Sylva, Minister of state for Petroleum Resources, made this known on Wednesday when briefing state house correspondents in Aso Rock, Nigeria’s Presidency.

The moribund refinery has been under rehabilitation since February. The Buhari administration had earlier in the year approved $1.5 billion for the repair of the refinery despite reservations from not a few Nigerians, that the country may never get a good value for the money.

This is not the first time the federal government had allocated a humungous fund for the repair of the refinery in a bid to refine crude oil locally for the benefit of Nigerians, so as to reduce the importation of petrol and the attendant huge subsidy payments.

Experts in the sector had therefore described the efforts as a waste of time and resources.

But the minister has now assured that the refinery will begin work in the next three months.

Silva said, “The rehabilitation of the refineries is ongoing. As we said earlier, the old refinery in Port Harcourt, which is about 60,000 barrels per day capacity, will be functional by December and, of course, we still have some time in the contracting time to conclude the rest of the Port Harcourt Refineries.

“Works in the Kaduna and Warri refineries are also in progressing very well. We will soon be embarking on an inspection visit and some of you journalists will be will be able to go with us to ascertain for yourselves what the extent of work is.”

The minister also hinted some efforts the government is making before next year’s removal of fuel subsidy.

“On the CNG development, it’s very much in progress. That is part of the promises we made, part of the things we want to put in place before the removal of subsidy.

“Subsidy has still not been removed because some of these conditions that were agreed upon have not been met and we’re definitely working assiduously to ensure that all the facilities are in place, the pumping stations and the conversion kits.

“I can assure you that work is going on very much in that regard. We may not be in a position to announce exactly what we are doing now or where we are, but I can assure you that work is very much ongoing.”