The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has indefinitely shut down two of the nation’s three refineries due to increase in their operation costs and several maintenance interventions.

A top official of the corporation told Daily Trust that Kaduna and Warri refineries had been down in July and yet to resume production till date.

“Kaduna Refining and Petrochemical Company is about to start complete overhaul – Turn Around Maintenance (TAM). Once the assessment is finished, we will have an idea (when it will be back),” the official said, adding that only the Port Harcourt refinery is functioning at the moment.

Checks showed that both refineries have suffered intermittent shut downs this year.

The 125,000 barrels per day (bpd) Warri refinery had only in January resumed production but operations were halted again in March due to a power problem.

NNPC in its latest operations report for July announced ₦11.87 billion loss which it attributed to the downtime and “unimpressive performance of the refineries.”

“Also, the unavailability of some of the major secondary units in Port Harcourt Refining and Petrochemical Company in July 2017 accounted for the non-production of some light end products with the corresponding increase in OPEX (operational expenditure) as a result of several maintenance interventions,” the report said.

At an inaugural pipeline security conference in Abuja in September, NNPC’s Group Managing Director, Maikanti Baru hinted that all the refineries would soon be shut down for a comprehensive rehabilitation.

“We will then fully bring them back to what they should be as new refineries,” he said, adding that eight committees on the refineries’ rehabilitation had been inaugurated.

“We intend to focus on the repairs of the refineries with all that it takes to ensure that by the time we are done by 2019, these refineries will be as good as new,’’ the GMD said.

Spokesman for the corporation, Ndu Ughamadu was yet to respond to questions about the continued turnaround maintenance of the plants as at press time. (Daily Trust)

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