The National Petroleum Corporation,
(NNPC) will remodel the nation’s four refineries, its Group Managing
Director, Dr Emmanuel Ibe Kachukwu said yesterday.
The Refineries are in Port-Harcourt (two), the Warri Refinery and Kaduna Refinery and Petrochemical Company, KRPC.
Dr Kachukwu spoke after touring the
various units of the Kaduna refinery. He lamented that with what he has
seen, the four refineries cannot take Nigeria anywhere.
He said given the fact that the
refineries were built between 30 to 40 years ago, there is the urgent
need to support them with new modules and structures that are in tandem
with global best practices in terms of new business module, new
commercial module and technological approach.
“In term of how to get the refinery to
function, like I said, new business module, new commercial module, new
approach to how we have to get to where we should be, but what is
obtainable is that most of our refineries are close to 30-40 years old.
“We need to begin to look at building
new refineries in the same land space where they can share facilities,
so that you will have something to lean on when these old ones are
beginning to kick out”.
He said: “That stuff of killing NNPC was
historical before I came in, but we are working hard to justify why it
shouldn’t be killed, but I am a business man, if we get to a point where
we are not doing well enough, and it needs to be killed, we look at
what alternatives are.
“Today, whether we like it or not, lets
be realistic here, irrespective of the fact that negative gets alot of
more publicity than the positives, this organisation has kept this
country going for the last 30-40 years, it has built and sustained the
refineries, it has delivered fuel the moment our refineries don’t work,
it has delivered retails in a very difficult terrain.
“So what I am trying to say is that you
don’t throw away the baby with the bath water, there is bath water that
need to be thrown away, and we are doing that, but there is a healthy
baby sitting there that we are going to nurture it”.
The NNPC boss said over 200 million dollars was being saved from the cancellation of the oil swap deal.
“The essence of crude swap cancellation
is that straight away you are saving over 200 million plus dollars by
virtue of doing that. You have transparency in the deal per month and
you have transparency that embedded in those processes, the new
processes”, he added.
Dr Kachukwu who commended the resilience
and determination of the engineers of the four refineries, assured that
the NNPC is commited to making a difference within the 90 days time
frame he gave when he assumed the leadership of the corporation.
Speaking further on the status of the
KRPC he said: “Obviously, we need new modules because with this modules
it won’t get us to where we need to be very rapidly. Three out of the
six units of the plants were down, some of them for a very long
gestation periods, we need to sit down and see what modules, how do you
turn around the new refinery. How do you work on emergency basis
components of the ones that are there.
“Without them we are not going to get
out of problems of fuel supply, power supply and all that. So we are
going to have a gone whole commercial structure, gone whole engineering
structure a lot needs to be done different from models we are pursuing
right now. For me, it is truth time”.
“On security of the nation’s pipelines
he said: “ we are doing quite a lot on security as you are aware the
working with the security forces to enhance the Warri to kaduna point
has been tested now for integrity and I think by my understanding for
the last testing is that is fairly ok now to take control if the FCC
units are working.
“So on a short term basis we have been
able to deal with that. Medium term basis we are going to work with the
security agencies to ensure that the sort of destruction you find on
pipelines not just from warri to kaduna but the whole country become a
thing of the past.
“We working on a very enhanced, very
robust, very accelerated program to deal with that working with the
security forces. We are trying everything that we can and we are sending
a body language that the business of messing around with the pipelines
is over and I think the message is going round as loud as ever.”
source: nation newspaper
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