The Federal Government spent N100 billion on refineries’ rehabilitation in 2021, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, has said.
The corporation revealed this in its annual performance for 2021.
The report didn’t indicate which refineries were rehabilitated, even though Port Harcourt refinery is undergoing repairs.
In the NNPC’s latest funding performance report, the firm stated that N8.33bn was spent monthly for a period of 12 months beginning from January to December 2021 on refinery rehabilitation.
The Federal Government has been making moves to get the country’s refineries back on stream, as Nigeria currently imports bulk of its refined petroleum products.
The Federal Government had processed $98m and N17.2bn as part payments for the ongoing rehabilitation of the Port Harcourt Refining Company.
The report stated that the government had made an initial payment of $194m, being the 15 per cent advance payment required for the rehabilitation of the facility, to Tecnimont SpA of Italy.
This was contained in the financial status update of the rehabilitation of PHRC as the project was financed by an equity contribution by its sponsor and loan by lenders (AfreximBank).
The report indicated that the Engineering, Procurement, Construction, Installation, and Commissioning contract price remained at $1.397bn lump sum with $162m as provisional sum, bringing the total project cost to $1.559bn, as approved by the Federal Executive Council.
The Federal Executive Council approved the contract for the EPCIC of the Port Harcourt refinery on March 17, 2021, and work on the facility commenced last year.
The council approved the award of the PHRC EPCIC contract to Tecnimont in March, and the contract agreement was signed on April 6, 2021, as the report seen in Abuja on Friday indicated that additional funds had been processed to ensure the continued rehabilitation of the plant.
In August last year, the Federal Executive Council approved the sum of $1.48bn for the rehabilitation of both Warri and Kaduna refineries.
