FG Targets 11.5m Litres Of Petrol As Rehabilitation Of Port Harcourt Refinery Begins

The federal government is targeting about eleven point five million litres of petrol from the Port Harcourt Refinery at the completion of the first phase of the rehabilitation exercise.

This was disclosed by the Managing Director of the Port Harcourt Refinery, Ahmed Dikko during the kick-off of the rehabilitation exercise on Thursday.

The Federal Executive Council had in March 2021 approved 1.5 billion dollars for the rehabilitation of the refinery which is expected to be completed in 44 months and three phases.

The Managing Director of the Refinery who spoke to newsmen said it will work at a 90% capacity when the first phase of the exercise is completed within 22 months.

Dikko said, “Once we are done, we hope to produce at a minimum capacity of 90% and above. So basically we would have a lot of products that we use in Nigeria today, produced from this facility going forward”.

“At least close to about eleven point five million litres of PMS every day will be churned out from the facility, that is more than enough to satisfy requirements around the environment and beyond”.

Dikko also said the management of the refinery has commenced community engagement to enable them to have a peaceful environment to carry out the project.

He explained “we have commenced stakeholders engagement with the host community. We don’t just want to provide employment, we want them to be partners in this project. So yes employment, they will have priority around that but then there are other things that they will require, that we will be ready to do for them as we journey into this project”.

“We will partner together with the contractor and satisfy this community engagement in a way that we will have a peaceful environment to do this project”

Also speaking, the Chief Operating Officer of the Port Harcourt Refinery, Mustapha Yakubu said the project will create about 3000 jobs for the local community and the expatriates that will work there.