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Port Harcourt Refinery targets full capacity utilisation

By BusinessNews Staff on June 3, 2015

The Port Harcourt Refining Company (PHRC) Limited has activated comprehensive but phased rehabilitation project that would bring about optimal processing capacity of the plants and full yield of different petroleum products by July 2015.

The rehabilitation will however be carried out in phases in a strategy that would permit operations to progress at available units of the complex while repair works continue on other processing units.
Managing Director of the company, Dr. Bafred Audu Enjugu, said in a statement at the weekend that the company, with support of the parent Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), has used the period of crude supply glitch at the refinery to embark on rehabilitation of Area I which hosts the crude distillation unit (CDU) to pave way for simultaneous operations and upgrade of other units ahead of July when crude supply to the plant is expected to be restored.
Enjugu explained that Area I of the refining complex is prioritised because of process sequence while the optimisation units such as the Catalytic Reformation Unit (CRU) and the Fluid Catalytic Cracking Unit (FCCU) are to be rehabilitated subsequently.

The later units, he said, further process initial output of the CDU to produce premium products used for blending primary products of CDU to achieve products of high octane rating.

The 210, 000 barrel per day refinery is expected to exceed 80 percent availability by first quarter of 2016 when all the units are expected to have been fully revamped and upgraded.

The contract for Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) of the refinery was planned to be handled by the original builders of the plant but the JGC of Japan, which built the plant could not honour the contract due to security concerns about Nigeria.

The Japanese contractors however recommended Technimont of Italy to carry out the job.

Enjugu explained that the contract could not progress when Technimont submitted outrageous charges and failed to provide performance guarantee for the job.

Enjugu said that NNPC could not give up on the refineries, and thus decided to mobilise its retired and active workforce as well as credible indigenous contractors with reputation of performance to take the challenge.

“The people are eager to prove that the plant can be recovered to full capacity, and I can tell you nobody knows the plant half as much as those who have spent their lifetime running it and maintaining it,” he said.

Enjugu said that all the technicians deployed in the work are skill certified, adding that their knowledge, experience, discipline and perseverance would be brought to bear on the job.

“On standards, I can tell you that it is more difficult not to comply than to comply,” he stressed, adding that the plants have sufficient intelligent sensors that call attention to errors, omissions and faults.

According to him, no lost time on injury is expected during the rehabilitation project, as safety experts from sister refineries of NNPC at Warri and Kaduna have been mobilised to Port Harcourt to assist during the entire period of the work.

Also speaking on the project, the Executive Director in charge of Operations at the Company, Mr. VA Ugochukwu, explained that the refinery has concentrated on production of low value products in the past because units that optimize full value production were not available due to long period without required Turn Around Maintenance.

He said the company’s operations and maintenance team has robust experience to bring the plants to full operations, to add maximum value to crude oil, and pump out premium products to the market.

Technical Director of DKG ITCC Limited, one of the local contractors involved in change-out of the Area 1 of the refinery, Mr. Oguntuberu Olusola Samuel, also commented that his company is confident to deliver its schedule within allocated 45 days period.

He explained that whereas his company has technical partnership with DKG of Hungary, it would deliver the job with 100 per cent indigenous workers, adding that the technical and safety standards of NNPC do not give room for errors.

[ThisDay]

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