The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) on Thursday announced the formal commencement of the first phase of rehabilitation work to be carried out on the 210,000 barrels per day capacity Port Harcourt refinery.

The announcement is coming 19 years after the last Turn Around Maintenance exercise was undertaken on the nation’s premier refining plant.

The Group Managing Director of NNPC, Maikanti Baru flagged-off the formal commencement of the rehabilitation work on the facility which also houses the 60,000 barrels per day old refinery that was built in 1965 and the 150,000 barrels per day new refinery inaugurated in 1989.

According to a statement issued in Abuja by NNPC’s Group General Manager, Public Affairs, Ndu Ughamadu, the project will be executed by Milan-based Maire Tecnimont S.P.A, in collaboration with its Nigerian affiliate, Tecnimont.

NNPC also said it was engaging Eni/NAOC as Technical Advisor to support the rehabilitation of Port Harcourt Refining Company and that NNPC/PHRC would leverage Eni’s extensive refinery supply chain network and warehouses to procure critical material for the programme.

Ughamadu noted that the first phase of the rehabilitation contract which will run for six months will involve detailed integrity check and equipment inspection of the refinery complex beginning from the end of March 2019.

According to Ughamadu, the integrity test will come as a forerunner to the second phase of the rehabilitation project which will entail a comprehensive revamp of the complex to restore it to a minimum of 90 per cent capacity utilization.

He further disclosed that subject to the successful completion of the integrity checks, phase two of the project will be executed on an Engineering Procurement Construction basis by Tecnimont in collaboration with the original builders of the plant, JGC of Japan.