House of Representatives members on Wednesday asked the Group Managing Director (GMD) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mele Kyari, to immediately commence operation of the Warri Refining and Petrochemical Company to improve on the production capacity.
They also urged the NNPC boss to furnish the House Committee on Petroleum Resources (Upstream) with details and circumstances surrounding the storage lease which are not disposing of the company.
The Committee has a mandate to investigate the failure, refusal and/or neglected of the NNPC to address the haulage challenges viz a viz inadequate storage tanks affecting the Warri refining and petrochemical company to forestall the frequent shutting down of the Refinery and report back in four weeks.
The directives were contained in resolutions that followed a motion by Ben Igbakpa, on the commencement of operations at the Warri Refining and Petrochemical Company.
The House noted that the Warri Refining and Petrochemical Company had a mandate to produce refined product from mainly local crude and that the three main sections of the production department, namely: reforming, crude distillation and catalytic cracking units have operated for the past (8) years due to the efforts of it personnel.
The House said they were aware that the plants were operating at an output of around 115m3/hour which translates to about 68 per cent of their installed capacity.
The products being supplied from the Refinery included; Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) or Petrol, Automotive Gas Oil (AGO), Kerosene (DPK), LPG, Low Pour Fuel Oil (LPFO) for Ships and Industrial Fuel and Carbon Black.
The resolutions read: “The House is Disturbed that the refinery has not operate optimally due to allegedly top Management decisions of the NNPC to ground the plant for personal benefit from marketers importing products that can be produced in the refinery.
“We are concerned that the plant had severally shut down due to haulage challenges, neglect in the evacuation of products, lack of functional or operational storage tanks and poor maintenance culture on the part of management which also constitutes another reason for the refinery non – functionality.”
“We aware of the alleged plan to ground the plant from refining products by members of the top echelon of the Warri Refinery in collaboration with the Chief Operating Officer (COO) as well as diverting crude meant for refining.
“We are also aware that when crude oil is delivered from Escravos tank farm for refining, the products are hoarded for about 14 days and thereafter diverted through the refinery jetty to interested buyers (or specific companies they have special interests in) who pay less.
“The resultant effects of this perceived economic sabotage is that the plant is brought down because no crude to refine as it has been diverted
“We are further aware that when it became apparent that the management of Warri Refinery has abandoned their responsibility of maintaining the Plant, the staff of the Refinery on several occasions contributed their monies to buy materials and tools to fix faulty equipment.
“Alarmed that currently, most of the spherical tanks used for storage of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) have been leased out to Kwale Hydrocarbon Nigeria Limited (KHNL), a private company while other storage tanks are being leased out to private interests all in a bid to ensure that the Warri Refining and petrochemical company remains shut down indefinitely, even when the said Refinery has the production capacity of 75 per cent.”
