The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) on Wednesday confirmed that the Port Harcourt Refinery, which commenced operations on Tuesday, is currently operating at 70% of its installed capacity, with plans to ramp up the refining capacity to 90%.
The company’s Chief Corporate Communications Officer, Olufemi Soneye, who gave this hint in a statement, expressed the company’s Board and management’s appreciation to Nigerians for their support that facilitated the restart of the 60,000 barrels-per-day refinery.
He described the achievement as a significant step forward after years of operational challenges and underperformance of the refinery even as he refuted the claims by certain individuals suggesting that the refinery was not producing products.
According to him, with the refinery currently operating at 70% of its installed capacity, some of its daily outputs include Straight-Run Gasoline (Naphtha): Blended into 1.4 million litres of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS or petrol); Kerosene: 900,000 litres; Automotive Gas Oil (AGO or Diesel): 1.5 million litres; Low Pour Fuel Oil (LPFO): 2.1 million litres; and Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) in Additional volumes
He further noted that the refinery incorporated crack C5, a blending component from the NNPCL’s sister company, Indorama Petrochemicals (formerly Eleme Petrochemicals), to produce gasoline that conformed to required specifications.
Soneye maintained that blending remained a standard practice in refineries globally, as no single unit can produce gasoline that fully complies with any country’s standards without such processes, adding that the NNPCL has made substantial progress on the refinery, which will begin operations soon without prior announcements.
