President
Muhammadu Buhari, who doubles as the Minister of Petroleum Resources,
has announced that the Kaduna, PortHarcourt, and Warri refineries,
have begun the production and refining of Dual Purpose Kerosene, DPK,
and Automotive Gas Oil, AGO, otherwise known as kerosene and diesel,
respectively.
This is coming at a time, when marketers
have refused to import kerosene and diesel, due to the high exchange
rate between the naira and the dollar, which has made the business
non-profitable.
Due to the scarcity and high demand for
the product, Post-Nigeria had reported that the product (kerosene), now
sells as high as N400/litre.
According to the Nigerian National
Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, which announced that they have resumed
production, the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas, NLNG, blamed the current
scarcity and high cost of Liquefied Petroleum Gas, LPG, nationwide, on
the inability of its LPG vessel to berth and discharge its contents, at
the Apapa ports, since December 29, 2016, due to congestion of the port
facility.
NNPC in a statement in Abuja, disclosed
that the refineries started producing both commodities, since Saturday,
and were currently producing more than 6 million litres of kerosene,
and 7 million litres of diesel, on a daily basis.
The resumption of refining of AGO and
DPK, according to the Corporation, was expected to balance the
disequilibrium in demand and supply of the products, being experienced
in parts of the country.
Addressing Journalists on the production
level of the Warri refinery, Managing Director, MD, Warri Refining and
Petrochemical Company, WRPC, Solomon Ladenegan, said the plant had been
doing well since the Crude Distillation Unit, CDU, was revived, up on
Saturday, January 7, 2017.
He pointed out that the refinery resumed
production on Saturday, at about 10:22 hours, with the plant’s CDU
functioning; saying that the plant now refines 2 million litres of
kerosene, and three million litres of diesel daily.
He said: “This morning (yesterday), we have pumped the products to PPMC, and they have started loading.“They are going to load up to one million litres of DPK and AGO. The products are there in the tank, and we are doing everything to get them to the market,” Ladenegan said.
His counterpart, the Managing Director
of the Port Harcourt Refining Company, PHRC, Bafred Enjugu, said the
Port Harcourt refinery was producing 3 million litres of AGO daily, in
addition to millions of DPK, being churned out by the refinery daily.
Enjugu, noted that the company’s
operators were thrilled, having rehabilitated the old Port Harcourt
refinery, where the production of AGO was being carried out by
themselves, without the deployment of foreign expertise.
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