Mohammed Shosanya

The Group Managing Chief Executive Officer of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation Limited (NNPCL), Mele Kyari, has assured the country that turn around maintenance on the Port Harcourt Refineries will be completed in two weeks, with production at the facility starting in December 2024.

He said this before the Senate adhoc committee probing the Turn Around Maintenance undertaken by the Federal Government through the NNPCL.

He said: “In the next two weeks, we are to start producing more products. Completion of mechanical maintenance has been achieved at the Port Harcourt refinery.

“We are done with rehabilitation work there, now you are to test if this completion is okay.

“As for Warri, we have also completed the mechanical works on it and it is undergoing the regulatory compliance processes that we are doing with our regulator. This also will be completed and it will be ready.

“Kaduna refinery will be ready by December, we have not reached that stage with the Kaduna refinery.

“All crude lines are active and have actually delivered over 450,000 barrels into Port Harcourt refinery.

“We are confident of the integrity of it. Yes, there may be security issues, but also the government is responding to the situation.

The Senate on Thursday, disowned the alleged report of a fraud in the Turn Around Maintenance of the nation’s refineries currently being undertaken by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited.

The Committee Chairman, Senator Ifeanyi Ubah, told his colleagues that he already had some documents on the TAM and that no fraudulent practice had been discovered in the exercise.

Senator Ubah said the country would want to know that progress is being made on the rehabilitation of the refineries

He said: “I have seen some documents indicating that something is being done and there is nothing to suggest that there is foul play in the exercise.”

He said members of the committee would visit all the refineries with a view to ascertaining the progress of work there so that a comprehensive report would be presented to the Senate in plenary soonest.

A member of the adhoc committee, Senator Mpigi Barnada, urged the NNPCL management to pay attention to the security challenges in the oil rich region.

He said it would not augur well if the refineries are fixed and insecurity prevented crude from getting there.

Mohammed Shosanya

Mr. Mele Kyari, the Group Chief Executive Officer, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) Ltd., says it recorded 9000 infractions on its pipelines in two years.

Mr Kyari disclosed this this when the House of Representatives Special Committee on Oil Theft went on an oversight function at the headquarters of NNPC Ltd. in Abuja on Wednesday.

He said, “From 2022 to date, we have deactivated 6,465 illegal refineries. We have also removed 4,876 illegal connections to a pipeline out of 5,570 that we have discovered.

He added that the NNPC was not sure if that was the actual number, adding that it still has about a thousand that the corporation knew had not yet been removed.

“Some of the scale of the infraction that we see is unbelievable; we are not able to deal with it. When you remove one connection, the next day in the same location, someone will replace it.

He said, “It is obvious that crude oil theft is almost an end-to-end issue in Nigeria; it is very obvious that everyone is involved.

“In most of these locations, they are less than a hundred meters from the settlement; some are even less than a hundred meters from the local government headquarters.

He said that notwithstanding the distance, these evils are being perpetrated unabated, adding that this makes it impossible to guarantee the production that would happen the next day.

He added that the key issue had been security, adding that the NNPC moved to curtail the menace of pipeline vandals by incorporating all security agencies into a single platform, including private security.

According to him,no country surrenders the protection of such critical assets, which are our source of income, to non-state actors.

He said, “It is very obvious that despite all the integrity issues with our pipeline and our facilities, we have capacity beyond 2 million barrels per day without doing anything.

“But today, we are struggling to meet the budget estimate of 1.6 million barrels per day. This by no means is related to crude oil theft; no, it’s not true, but the core issue that is affecting the other core issue is crude theft.

“No one will produce oil, knowing fully well that he cannot dispose of it, and that’s why no one is putting money into it.

“In 2022, it became so obvious that if something dramatic is not done, we are going to run into trouble. On a specific date, our production came down to as low as 1.1 million barrels per day.

“And on a particular date, we have gone below a million barrels to explain this except for the infraction and especially the oil thief.

Speaking, the Chairman of the Special Committee, Rep. Alhassan Ado-Doguwa, said it was established and common knowledge that operating oil and gas pipelines in Nigeria constituted a herculean challenge.

He said, “Necessarily a week or even a few days go by without an infraction or damage to an oil and/or gas pipeline in the country.”

According to him, it is also saddening that these infractions do not stop with the pipelines; daily breaches are also recorded at the oil well heads, flow stations, loading, and export terminals, among others.

He said the opacity and non-transparency of regulatory activities at our crude oil export terminals were alarming.

“We are compiling the facts and figures. Instances where approvals are hastily granted to vessels involved in crude theft just to cover official complicity are reported.

He said, “incidences of undeclared lifting are noted, and all these and several other infractions, particularly in our offshore marine environment, contribute to the huge volume of crude oil theft being reported.

According to him, it is indisputable that Nigeria has been bedeviled by crude oil theft and pipeline vandalism of enormous proportions, most of which occurs within the Niger Delta region.