The Kaduna Refining and Petrochemical Company, one of the country’s crude oil refineries being managed by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, has remained dormant.
According to the corporation, the refinery’s capacity utilisation has remained at zero for months, as the KRPC is not refining crude oil despite receiving the commodity. In its latest monthly oil and gas report for June 2018, which was obtained by our correspondent in Abuja on Wednesday, the NNPC also stated that its group trading surplus dropped from N18.11bn in May to N7.15bn in June this year.
This implies that the oil firm lost N10.96bn in terms of its trading surplus within one month. Findings showed that the firm, however, posted a positive 2018 year-to-date trading surplus, as it made N69.31bn within the six-month period. An analysis of the performances of the refineries showed that the KRPC received 78,833 metric tonnes of crude in the months of May and June this year. It, however, processed no drop of crude oil in the two months, as its capacity utilisation was given as zero per cent.
The Warri Refining and Petrochemical Company processed 246,039MT and 138,310MT of crude in May and June, respectively, thus, the plant’s capacity utilisation dropped from 46.55 per cent to 27.04 per cent in the period. For the Port Harcourt Refining Company, it was observed that the plant processed 132,595MT and 237,875MT of crude oil in May and June, respectively. This showed that unlike the other two refineries, the PHRC’s capacity utilisation moved up from 14.93 per cent to 27.68 per cent in the period.
Nigeria’s refineries have been performing poorly over time and the Federal Government often makes promises to get them fixed. On October 18 this year, The PUNCH reported that the Minister of State for
Petroleum Resources, Ibe Kachikwu, stated that the refineries would soon get investments of about $3bn.
Source: Punch Newspaper.
