Mohammed Shosanya

The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited has concluded plans to hand over the Port Harcourt refinery to private operators.

The company is seeking to engage reputable and credible operations and maintenance companies to operate and maintain the Port Harcourt Refining Company.

This was to ensure reliability and sustainability towards meeting the nation’s fuel supply and energy security obligations.

In a publication on its website on Monday, the NNPCL said the contract scope shall cover refinery business processes like long-term and short-term production/operations planning; production and operations execution; monitoring, reporting, and optimisation of operations; maintenance execution; health and safety; environmental management; minor projects and others.

NNPCL requested that interested companies must demonstrate “a minimum average annual Turnover of at least $2 billion USD for the financial years ending: 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 respectively.”

The NNPCL had commenced the supply of crude oil to the Port Harcourt refinery to test-run it.

On December 21, 2023, the Federal Government announced the mechanical completion of rehabilitation work on the Area-5 Plant of the Port Harcourt Refining Company in Rivers State.

It said the first phase of the plant had been completed, as the facility would start refining 60,000 barrels of crude oil daily after the Christmas break.

In March 2021, the Nigerian government approved a GBP 1.08 billion ($1.5 billion) budget for the renovation and modernisation of the refinery complex.