Power shortage hobbles Warri Refinery, NNPC shuts facility pending supplies
Following a trip off of gas turbine generators that supply power to the Warri refinery in Delta State earlier in the week, the 125,000 barrel per day (bpd) refinery has been shut down.
The action is done to avoid colossal damage and in anticipation of when the turbines will come back to life.
Business Hilights recalls that the facility had resumed production only last two months after its Crude Distillation Unit (CDU) was revved up allowing it to refine 2 million litres of kerosene and 3 million litres of diesel daily.
Insights given by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation’s (NNPC) chief operating officer (COO) in charge of refineries, Mr. Anibor Kragha at the just concluded Oil & gas summit in Abuja showed that NNPC has contracted partner power firm, General Electric (GE) to rectify the trip off.
Kragha said “We have shut down to make sure that we address that properly and GE had started work in earnest”.
Apart from the Warri refinery, the official disclosed that all the other plants have been running well at 60 per cent of capacity since January including the old Port Harcourt refinery which hadn’t worked in “nine to ten years ago.”
Energy analysts say the emerging new redevelopment model will among other things push up the deliveries of the entire four nation’s refineries’ to about 90 per cent efficiency which can cause the end of products importation on delivery.
