The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has said that the Kaduna refinery was capable of running at 60 per cent installed production capacity following a quasi turn around maintenance two years ago.
This, according to the Corporation’s management was contrary to media reports alleging that the federal government was losing over N700 billion annually in projected revenue through the Kaduna Refinery as well as N12 billion on remuneration of staff who were alleged to be largely idle as the refinery was not functioning.
The report which came on the heels of an oversight visit to the Kaduna Refinery by the Senate Committee on Petroleum Resources (Downstream) earlier last week, portrayed the 32-year old plant as a drain-pipe on the nation’s economy.
However, the corporation’s spokesman, Dr. Levi Ajuonuma, in a statement yesterday stated that the Kaduna Refining and Petrochemicals Company, (KPRC), was a functional and viable strategic business unit of the Corporation which was contributing immensely towards NNPC’s operations in the oil and gas industry in Nigeria.
He affirmed that if not for pipeline vandals, the refinery could run at 60 to 70 per cent capacity utilisation on a sustained basis, but regretted that due to incessant pipeline vandalism, the desired production level has remained unsustainable.
He informed that though the quasi turn around maintenance of the refinery by Nigerian engineers was generally believed to be inadequate, credit must be given to the local engineers for running the refinery at 60 per cent installed production capacity amid artificially induced challenge of incessant pipeline vandalism.
“In the last several years the fuel plant has operated steadily at 60 per cent throughput translating to a daily production of 1.5 million litres of PMS, 1.4 million litres of AGO and 0.65 million litres of kerosene, in addition to other products. The biggest problem however is crude oil supply which has become unreliable due to rampant pipeline breaks which on many occasions necessitated the shutdown of the refinery,” Ajuonuma said.
On crude importation, Ajuonuma stated that the 110 barrels per day Kaduna refinery has the capacity to receive 60,000 barrels of local crude and 50,000 barrels of heavy crude imported and pumped through the Warri Escravos crude pipeline.
He explained that by design, the plant was configured to receive both local light crude and heavy crude which was usually imported from Venezuela, Russia, Iran and some other countries under a swap arrangement to help KRPC in the production of lubricants and asphalts which could not be achieved using the nation’s? local crude.