PHCN: The Port Harcourt Refinery set to start operation by the end of June

While inspecting the petrol stations in Abuja, the Group Managing Director of NNPC, Dr Joseph Dawha, said that the refinery in Port Harcourt would commence operation by the end of June; in his words:
"Presently, the refineries are undergoing rehabilitation and we are undertaking what we call a new strategy to carry out the turn around maintenance on them. Basically, what this means is that we are carrying out phased implementation of rehabilitation of the refineries. We are taking the refineries unit by unit and carrying out turnaround maintenance on them. So in other words, if the maintenance are being carried out on the run and we started a couple of months ago.
Most of the refineries have advanced to a certain stage where they will be able to operate very soon. For example, the Port Harcourt refinery, which has reached an advanced stage, will start receiving crude by end of this month and then of course will start contributing to the available products in the country.'he said Dr Dawha denied claims that the oil corporation abandoned the four refineries in Nigeria - 2 in port harcourt, one in Kaduna and one in Warri 'I've heard some people say we have neglected the refineries, no, farther from that. We hope that at the end of the exercise, these refineries will be fully back into operation and we will minimise some of the problems we have with importation. We decided that if the refineries were not in good state to process crude for maximum gain, then there was no point sending crude to the refineries. Therefore what you do is to try and fix it so that by the time you start processing the crude, you will get real value for the crude you are sending to the refineries. We are satisfied with the level of work that has been carried out so far in the Port Harcourt refinery, so that if you start processing crude now you will get real value."