By Enyichukwu Enemanna
Nigeria’s Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Oil) has set a December 2024 timeline for the completion of the ongoing rehabilitation work at the moribund Kaduna Refinery, situated in the North West geopolitical zone of the country, a development aimed at ending the West African country’s total reliance on imported petroleum products.
At an inspection tour of the 110,000 bpd capacity refinery on Saturday, Heineken Lokpobiri said the resuscitation of the nation’s refineries will assist in actualising the government’s dream of ending petroleum product import.
The multi-billion naira facility is one of Nigeria’s four dysfunctional refineries that have refined no petrol for many years despite a humongous amount budgeted annually for “turnaround maintenance”, a spending the parliament has indicated interest to probe.
Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) has in February signed an agreement with a Korean Company, Daewoo Engineering and Construction Nigeria Limited for the rehabilitation of the refinery.
Lokpobiri in the company of NNPCL Chief Executive Officer, Mele Kyari, and other senior officials of the petroleum ministry was at the refinery to ascertain the level of the ongoing rehabilitation work under the quick-fix project of the federal government.
The Managing Director of Kaduna Refinery, Mustapha Sugungun, took the minister and his team round the plant
With the progress made so far by the contractor handling the rehabilitation work, the petroleum minister was optimistic that the refinery will come back to life by end of 2024, an optimism shared by the NNPCL CEO.
