Kaduna Refinery and Petrochemical Company, which has the capacity to refine 110,000 barrels of crude oil a day, restarted production on Saturday after it was closed for months for repairs.
The managing director, Pipelines and Products marketing Company, Esther Nnamdi-Ogbue, said on Sunday that the plant, which was closed in September, came back on stream ahead of the December deadline for Nigeria’s four refineries to return to full production.
The group managing director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, Ibe Kachikwu, had issued a 90-day ultimatum to the managements of the fourrefineries shortly after his appointment last August. Mrs. Nnamdi-Ogbue said the Kaduna plant,which is currently undergoing a test run of its production lines, is expected to commence trucking of petrol by the end ofnext week.
“Kaduna refinery came back on stream on Saturday as scheduled and is running,” the PPMC boss told PREMIUM TIMES on Sunday, via text message.
“PMS (Premium Motor spirit, also called petrol) should be available for trucking by the end of the week. The refinery is expected to produce an average of about 1.6 million litres of PMS daily once in full operation,” she said. Prior to its closure in September, Kaduna refinery had stopped working for most partof the year, except briefly in July and August, when its utilisation capacity dropped to about 2.6 per cent and 10.5 per cent respectively, according the NNPC monthly operational report for October.
PREMIUM TIMES
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