In a move aimed at boosting efficiency and productivity, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) is seeking to transfer the operations of the Port Harcourt Refinery to private entities. The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Heineken Lokpobiri, announced the mechanical completion of the refinery last month. The national oil company is actively searching for reputable and credible Operations & Maintenance (O&M) companies to operate and maintain the Port Harcourt Refining Company (PHRC) to ensure reliability and sustainability to meet the nation’s fuel supply and energy security obligations.
The NNPC, in a post on its website on Monday, said that the contract’s scope will cover various refinery business processes, including long- and short-term planning for production and operations, production and operations execution, monitoring, reporting, and optimization of operations, maintenance execution, environmental management, health and safety, minor projects, and others.
NNPCL has requested interested companies to demonstrate a minimum average annual turnover of at least $2 billion for the fiscal years ending in 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022, respectively.
As part of the testing phase, the NNPC had commenced the supply of crude oil to the Port Harcourt refinery. The federal government officially announced the mechanical completion of rehabilitation work at the Port Harcourt Refining Company’s Area-5 Plant in Rivers State on December 21, 2023. It was stated that the first phase of the plant had been completed, and following the Christmas holiday, the facility would begin refining 60,000 barrels of crude oil daily.
The Port Harcourt Refinery has been in operation since 1965 in Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta region. The Alesa Eleme refinery complex is located about 25 kilometers east of Port Harcourt in Rivers State, Nigeria. The Nigerian government approved a £1.08 billion ($1.5 billion) budget for the refinery complex’s renovation and modernization in March 2021.
