16-08-08 The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is making plans to build two more refineries to ensure availability of petroleum products for domestic use and export.
It has also put in place a short- term plan to supply gas to the Power Holding Company of Nigeria's power plants, which will result in increase in power generation capacity from about 2,000 to 4,000 MW of electricity by the end of 2008 and 6,500 MW in 2009.

The acting group managing director of NNPC, Alhaji Abubakar Lawal Yar'Adua, disclosed this while speaking on his achievements after one year in office. While calling on other Nigerians to invest in the sector, Yar'Adua said the only way to ensure availability of petroleum products in Nigeria and save foreign reserve is to build more refineries in the country.
According to the GMD, the organisation is planning to build two more refineries in Lagos and Akwa Ibom states to boost the supply of the products.

Although Nigeria has four refineries at the moment, the NNPC boss said, they are not enough to cater for domestic use and export. According to him, the existing refineries only produce about 445,000 litres of petroleum products, which he said is only 60 % of domestic consumption. Speaking further, the NNPC chief executive disclosed that his organisation imports the balance of 40 % of the products to meet up with the local demand.
"We cannot regard ourselves as an oil-producing nation when we have to depend on importation," he said, adding that the solution to the scarcity of petroleum products experienced sometimes, is to build more refineries in Nigeria.

While regretting the inability of the past administrations to build more refineries, Yar'Adua condemned the proposed privatisation of the existing refineries by the past administration.
"One year ago, the sale of refineries in Kaduna and Port Harcourt was reversed and performance to date has confirmed our belief that these facilities were not scraps," he said.

He explained that both the Kaduna and Warri refineries were out of operation for two years due to the damage done to crude oil pipeline at Chanomi creek in Delta State, which is the only source of crude supply to the refineries.
"Using 100 % local companies, NNPC management was able to get the pipeline rehabilitated and re-commissioned within three months. This has made possible an effective delivery of crude oil on system (Escravos-Warri and Warri- Kaduna)."

Explaining further, the GMD announced that Warri, Kaduna, and Port Harcourt refineries are now working at 80, 68 and 60 % capacity respectively.
"I am glad to inform you that all the refineries are now back on stream resulting in the reduction of imports, thus conserving foreign exchange for the country," said the NNPC chief executive. He assured that by the end of this year the refineries would be restored to full capacity.