The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has started operations to rehabilitate the Port Harcourt Refinery Complex, located in Rivers State. Following a $1.5 billion approval by the Federal Executive Council, the upgrade is being executed in three phases of 18, 24 and 44 months by Italian company, Tecnimont SpA.
The complex comprises two refineries with a combined capacity of 210,000 barrels per day. The rehabilitation aims to restore the complex to 90% of its nameplate capacity and is being funded through Afreximbank and from internally generated revenue. It will be supervised by the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission, the Ministry of Finance, Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, among others.
“We shall from time to time visit to see the progress of work outside, and sooner than later we shall come on to commission the work. We will support all that is necessary to be done to expedite the rehabilitation, we are ready to support the contract to secure the necessary approvals internally within Nigeria,” Kyari stated.
In addition to capacity increases, the rehabilitation is expected to initiate socio-economic growth through local job creation opportunities. Yinusa Yakubu, Chief Operating Officer for refineries and petrol chemicals, NNPC, noted that out of the over 3,000 expected workers in the project, only 70 are foreigners. Consequently, the project is expected to drive economic growth.