…….Says turnaround maintenance since 25yrs mismanaged
The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) has confessed that the turnaround maintenance executed on Nigeria’s moribund refineries have failed.
The national oil company also said that the measures, on the other hand, contributed to the deterioration and near collapse of the refineries.
The group managing director of the NNPC dropped the hint during a meeting with lawmakers in the House of Representatives. The House Adhoc Committee is investigating the state of Nigeria’s four refineries located at Warri, Port Harcourt and Kaduna.
“We recognize that today none of our refineries is operating for the very obvious reason that through the work of this committee, you will find out why they are not operating. We will hide nothing from you. We will also tell you where we are as we speak today.
“Needless to say that the refineries were essentially not properly managed over time, not just today but in the last 20 to 25 years. The turnaround maintenance processes were clearly mismanaged over time. I have said this over and over.
“We have degradation of monumental proportions that we met and of course, the only way you can do this is to conduct a full turnaround maintenance.”
He said there were other factors that contributed to the failure of the turnaround measures, including vandalism, sabotage of oil infrastructure including pipelines, by hoodlums.
Kyari said that the original plan was to concurrently proceed with the work so that as Port Harcourt Refinery comes up, Kaduna and Warri will also come up until the total rehabilitation of the refineries.
Earlier in his comments, the chairman of the Adhoc Committee, Ganiyu Abiodun Johnson reminded stakeholders that the committee was set up to investigate the state of refineries in the country to determine the actual cost of rehabilitation and what is needed to bring them back to maximum refining capacity.
The committee requested that the NNPC management provide details and records of the ongoing and past turnaround maintenance and appear before the committee on June 3rd.
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