The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited has said that the Port Harcourt refinery will commence operations in early August.
NNPC’s group chief executive officer (GCEO), Mele Kyari stated that the operationalisation of the particular refinery is one of the emerging indicators in the energy and gas sector that Nigeria would become a net exporter of petroleum products by December.
He spoke on Monday at the national assembly when economic stakeholders appeared before the senate committee on finance led by Sani Musa, a parliamentarian.
Kyari said that in a few months time, oil production level for the country would hit 2 million barrels per day (bpd) as all enablement towards the actualization of this has already been set up.
According to the NNPC boss, the oil and gas industry, is very crucial in bringing a turnaround in the present economic situation and “we understand the importance of this”.
“We have already seen growth in our oil and gas production because of certain actions that Mr. President personally took, and also the very mere truth that we have also declared a war on production activities, and this is yielding the required results,” he said.
“The combination of these two has now seen us restoring production in our country, and we believe that, as the Honorable minister has said, we will soon hit the target of 2 million barrels oil production per day.
“Specific to NNPC refineries, we have spoken to a number of your committees, that it is impossible to have the Kaduna refinery come to operation before December, it will get to December, both Warri and Kaduna; but that of Portharcourt will commence production early August this year.”
The NNPC GCEO had stated that the refinery would start production by the end of March, but this didn’t happen.
According to a report by TheCable, President Tinubu recently expressed concerns amid the NNPC’s failure to deliver essential projects including the Port Harcourt refinery.
However, the minister of state for petroleum resources (oil), Heineken Lokpobiri said projects of that magnitude often take time, adding that the refinery is at its final rehabilitation stage.