Mele Kyari
NNPC Ltd admits PH Refinery is up but still blends imported products
Sopuruchi Onwuka
National oil company, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited is struggling to convince the public that one of it’s refining plants in Port Harcourt has started producing the premium motor spirit which popularly called petrol or gasoline.
The company had released cheering report that it was able to truck out petrol from the Port Harcourt refinery plant which had been moribund for years.
But inside sources revealed that only blending of naphtha and different specifications of products are being done to cook acceptable petrol for local consumption.
Our initial inquiries to the NNPC media managers did not get any response but documents of transactions relating to activities at the plant showed that NNPC imported high octane gasoline for blending into lower octane specifications for domestic distribution.
The Oracle Today reports that the quality of petrol is rated by octane number level, with higher octane numbers conferring premium quality on the product.
The clarification from NNPC followed media reports that the old Port Harcourt refining plant is currently functioning only as a blending hub for different imported products.
In one of the transaction documents cited by our correspondents, NNPC clearly placed orders for two cargoes of high octane petrol for delivery at the old Port Harcourt refinery.
The cargoes of 28,000 tons each have Reid Octane Number (RON) of 94 min with gravity range of 0.75.
The cargoes were to be delivered at the Port Harcourt Refining Company (PHRC) Limited across September and October this year.
In placing the order, NNPC was specific that the high RON gasoline was to be blended with ” naphtha produced from our 60,000bpsd Port Harcourt refinery (Area 5 plants).”
In a follow up clarification, the NNPC’s group spokesman, Olufemi Soneye, acknowledged that the old Port Harcourt refinery was only producing straight run gasoline also called naphtha.
He also confirmed that the produced naphtha would need to be blended into some 1.4 million liters of premium motor spirit before distribution to the market.
Mr Soneye also admitted that other products from the refinery are distillates and fuel oils which command little market demand in the prevailing clean fuel landscape.
In describing the operations at the refinery as standard, Mr Soneye said no single refinery unit would produce standard quality petrol without blending.
He added that the old refinery would be optimized from current 70 percent utilization to 90 percent; while the newer Port Harcourt refinery would soon activate without notice to the public.
The Oracle Today reports that the President of Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, had earlier accused NNPC and its contractors of running a gasoline blending plant in Malta specifically for the Nigerian market.
President of Dangote Group, Alh Aliko Dangote
Group Chief Executive Officer of NNPC Limited, Mallam Mele Kyari, had dismissed the allegation as unfounded.
The Dangote refinery and it’s ambition to dominate domestic and regional market had put the NNPC on the spotlight over its decades of costly refinery rehabilitation projects and huge import deals.
An open spat with the Dangote refinery over pricing and displacement of imports may have spurred the NNPC Limited into a rush to capture a space in the market.
