TheCable

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) says it aims to reduce fuel importation by boosting the capacity utilisation of the country’s refineries to 60 percent by the end of 2017.

According to NNPC reports, the average capacity utilisation for the refineries from January to October 2016 stood at approximately 14.5 percent.

This was disclosed by Maikanti Baru, group managing director of the corporation, during a courtesy call on him by the board and Management of Media Trust Limited, publishers of Daily Trust Newspapers.

Baru spoke of NNPC’s determination to end product importation in a few years, saying a concrete plan was on ground to achieve that.

Capacity Utilisation of Nigeria’s refineries

“We are putting together various programmes to ensure that we achieve at least 60% local refining by the end of this year,” he said.

“It is the procedure or methodology that we are changing a little bit; we are focusing on the process licensors to come and audit our processes and they have already started auditing most of our process units in the various refineries.

“We hope if we do all these systematically, we should be able to get about 60 per cent level of capacity utilisation by the end of this year or at worst by the first quarter of 2018 and get to 80% by the end of 2018 so that we can locally be able to supply half of our PMS requirements.

“Also, with other efforts in terms of other refineries coming in place, we should be able to quit importation in a few years.”

A statement by Ndu Ughamadu, group general manager, group public affairs division of NNPC quoted Baru as lauding the management of Media Trust Limited for its factual reportage of the corporation’s activities and operations.

“You have remained a leading voice in the fight against unwholesome activities of crude oil theft, pipeline vandalism and sabotage of the nation’s oil and gas installations. We will like to see this gesture continue,” he said.

He urged the media to help in enlightening the public on the dangers of pipeline vandalism, “has become a drain on the nation’s economy”.