Port Harcourt Refinery Repairs End Soon – Enjugu, MD

Nigeria’s biggest refinery, Port Harcourt
Refining Company (PHRC) Limited has
said its refinery rehabilitation is nearing
completion.
Managing Director, Dr. Bafred Audu
Enjugu also said upon completion of
work, the 210,000 barrels per day
refinery would have attained 80 per cent
capacity utilization.
According to him, the remaining
rehabilitation work will, however, be
carried out in phases in a strategy that
would permit operations to progress at
available units of the complex while
repairs continue on other processing
units.
When completed, the refinery is
expected to stop significant volume of
petroleum products currently imported,
substantially cut subsidy bill on
government and also evolve a
sustainable model for use of in-country
capacity for maintenance of all local
refineries.
The Executive Director, Operations, Mr.
V. A. Ugochukwu, said the refinery had
concentrated on production of low value
products in the past because units that
optimize full value production were not
available due to long period of lack of
required Turn-Around Maintenance
(TAM).
He said the operations and maintenance
team has robust experience to bring the
plants to full operations, add maximum
value to crude oil, and pump out
premium products to the market.
Also speaking, Executive Director,
Services, Sir Ralph Ugwu, stated that the
rehabilitation project is receiving full
host community support and has seen
unprecedented staff enthusiasm in
tackling such an intricate and
complicated challenge.
According to him, the rehabilitation is to
be carried out by indigenous workforce
without compromising standards, adding
that the project model would give full
expression to the targets and objectives
of the highly-applauded Nigerian
Content policy which, he explained, has
been very successful in the upstream
sector of the petroleum industry.
With the project, he said, PHRC would
lead to the implementation and
compliance of Nigerian Content policy in
the downstream end of the industry.
Enjugu told visiting journalists in Port
Harcourt that the management, with the
support of the parent company –
Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation
(NNPC), have used the period of crude
supply glitch at the refinery to embark
on rehabilitation of Area I which hosts
the Crude Distillation Unit (CDU) to pave
way for simultaneous operations and
upgrade of other units ahead of July
when crude supply to the plant is
expected to be restored.
Enjugu said Area I of the refining
complex is prioritized because of process
sequence while the optimization units
such as the Catalytic Reformation Unit
(CRU) and the Fluid Catalytic Cracking
Unit (FCCU) are to be rehabilitated
subsequently. The units, he said, further
process initial output of the CDU to
produce premium products used for
blending primary products of CDU to
achieve products of high octane rating.
The 210, 000 barrels per day refinery is
expected to exceed 80 per cent
availability by first quarter of 2016
when all the units are expected to have
been fully revamped and upgraded.