The Warri Refinery in Nigeria has ended operations all of a sudden after $897.6m in maintenance funding.
The refinery shutting down has since sparked concern over the transparency and effectiveness of its costly rehabilitation, despite the huge amount of dollars spent by the Federal Government.
The recent closure of the refinery is coming less than a month after it was declared operational, and this has led to concerned Nigerians talking about the state of Nigeria’s refinery management.
The Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority recently released a document detailing how the refinery, which has absorbed almost one billion dollars in maintenance fees, failed to produce Premium Motor Spirit (petrol) and was immediately closed down barely 30 days after ex-NNPC Group CEO, Mele Kyari, announced its readiness at the plant’s commissioning.
According to the document, the substantial investment that was put into its maintenance was still not enough to prevent the refinery from ceasing operations on the 25th of January, 2025, and full closure was inevitable due to safety concerns in its Crude Distillation Unit Main Heater, triggering fresh discussions about how the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) has completely failed in its duty to the nation.
Experts and industry operators have been nothing short of disappointed since the sudden shutdown, and futher research has shown that Port Harcourt Refining Company, which resumed operations in November last year, is currently working at less than 40% of its capacity.
Despite the huge amounts of money invested to ensure these refineries continue to operate at maximum capacity, they keep encountering various issues that hamper their daily operations. It is definitely bad news for Nigeria as the refinery, which was commissioned in 1978, was set up to supply markets in the country’s southern and southwestern regions, and its petrochemical plant has a capacity of 13,000 metric tons of polypropylene and 18,000 metric tons of carbon black yearly.
Government-owned refineries in Nigeria have always been crippled by neglect, mismanagement and continuous corruption, and while there have been renewed efforts to rehabilitate the Port Harcourt, Warri, and Kaduna refineries and decrease reliance on imported petroleum products, progress has been very sluggish.
Hopes to aid these refineries and boost Nigeria’s refining capacity were raised when the private sector began to invest in recent years, especially the Dangote Refinery, but despite initial optimism, the latest developments keep casting doubts on the FG’s readiness to make these lingering mismanagement issues a thing of the past.
Recall that NNPC spokesperson, Femi Soneye recently projected that the Port Harcourt Refinery, which is presently operating at just 37.87 percent of its installed capacity, would deliver daily outputs of 1.4 million litres of Straight-Run Gasoline for blending into Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), 900,000 litres of kerosene, 1.5 million litres of diesel, and large quantities of LPG and jet fuel.
