Kaduna Refining and Petrochemicals Company (KRPC) will attain 90% production of its 110,000 installed capacity by March next year, the Managing Director, Engineer Saidu A. Mohammed, has disclosed. He made the disclosure in an interview with Energy Correspondents who toured the refinery this morning.

The refinery was operating at 60% production capacity before commencement of the Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) in October 2014.

Mohammed said: “The 80-90% resumed production of the 30-year-old refinery is equivalent to 3-5 million liters of petrol, which is 150 trucks of 30,000 liter capacity truck per day.”

He said the KRPC resumed refining following the completion of its first phase of facility rehabilitation that began in October 2014.

“We have opened every column, changed what we can change to give us that level of production. What is outstanding is crude supply, but with the volume we have in stock, we have started production three days ago,” he said, adding: “We undertook phased rehabilitation because we do not want to completely shut down the refinery. Crude Distillation Unit was tested, Units are running, basically we are retracing our steps, one unit after the other essential unit like the FCC will follow by the end of the week.”

The KRPC MD urged the Federal Government to declare the NNPC pipelines “no go areas” to curtail the activities of vandals, which if continued, would hamper the transportation of crude oil from Warri to Kaduna.

“I am also urging the Federal Government to deploy the military to provide maximum security to the pipelines to tackle the activities of vandals,” he said.

Mohammed said apart from addressing fuel scarcity in the north, the resumption of production at the KRPC would attract employment opportunity in both the formal and the informal sectors.

He thousands of transporters would resume lifting of the product thereby providing employment to truck drivers and other stakeholders.

“The development will also boost the economy of the region business activities in Kaduna State and availability of products will fully resume. The banking sector would also be a major beneficiary because of the financial transactions involved in product transportation and a chain of similar business activities,” he said.

News Express reports that NNPC two days ago announced that the Port Harcourt and Warri refineries have resumed production after the phased rehabilitation which started in October 2014 had been completed.

The corporation said that with the successful re-streaming of the PHRC and WRPC, attention had moved to ensure completion of the second phase of rehabilitation work at KRPC which has 110,000 barrels per day installed capacity.

•Photo shows Kaduna Refinery. Photo: Garba Ahmad.