Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited, starts week on good note with Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Petroleum, Downstream, Rep. Abdullahi Gaya, expressing optimism that rehabilitation of Port Harcourt Refining Company (PHRC) plants will be completed on schedule.
By Edith Ike-Eboh and Emmanuel Afonne
The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited, started the week on a good note with the Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Petroleum, Downstream, Rep. Abdullahi Gaya, expressing optimism that rehabilitation of Port Harcourt Refining Company (PHRC) plants would be completed on schedule.
Speaking during an oversight visit of the Committee Members to the refinery, Gaya said the visit was necessitated by the need for the lawmakers to assess firsthand the level and quality of work done so far.
This, he said was to ensure that there was value for money in the execution of the project.
Gaya said that members of the Committee also wanted to ascertain if the work was progressing according to timelines to facilitate timely completion of the project and to check if there was need for further intervention for the general benefit of the nation.
He said that the committee was excited at the appreciable level of activity going on in the plant, especially when compared to level of work during the committee’s visit in 2020.
House of Representatives at plenary
The Committee Chairman said that with the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) now in force, and the presidential directive for its full implementation within a year, it is expected that the downstream sector would now be independent.
Earlier, the Managing Director, PHRC, Ahmed Dikko, who took members of the committee on a tour of the plants, said the rehabilitation project was aimed at restoring the plant to a minimum of 90 per cent nameplate capacity utilisation.
According to the MD, the scope of the rehabilitation project which will last for 44 months cuts across Process Areas 1, 2, 3 (NPHR) and 5 (OPHR); Power Plant and Utilities; Offsites; Jetty; Wastewater Treatment Plant; Distributed Control System (DCS); Emergency Shut Down (ESD) and Fire & Gas System (FGS); Technical Buildings; Non-Technical Buildings and Pipelines Repairs, etc.
On Health Safety and Environment (HSE) statistics, Dikko said that over 150,000 man-hours have already been achieved on the project with zero lost time injury, zero fatality and zero damage to property.
The Managing Director also informed the lawmakers that the contractor was complying with the provisions of the Nigerian Content Development Act as there was active participation of Nigerian companies as sub-contractors in the project.
Furthermore, he said MoU was signed between the contractor and the Community Leaders to boost cordial relationship between the company and the host communities, detailing expectations by the communities from the contractor.
Dikko said there was zero unrest so far due to the robust community relation engagement between Owner/Contractor and the host communities.
The PHRC Rehabilitation is in three phases.
The First Phase is the Old Refinery, Area 5 scheduled to be completed in April 2023.
The Second Phase is Area 1 and 2 scheduled to be completed in December 2023 and the Phase 11 scheduled to be completed by December, 2024.