The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, has said the Port Harcourt refinery is near completion and will be ready for work in the second quarter of 2023.
The Minister stated this at the seminar by Defence Correspondents in Abuja on Wednesday, March 22.
Represented by his media aide, Horatius Egua, the Minister said the problems confronting the oil and gas industry stemmed from years of neglect by past administrations.
“The oil and gas industry is the most complex sector in this country. The more you look, the less you see. In the last 12 months, the order by the president to end oil theft in the country is beginning to yield results. Before then our production went down to 900, 000 barrels per day but today it is gradually picking up and oscillating between 1.5 and 1.6 million barrels per day.
Apart from stealing, past governments did not invest in infrastructure in the oil and gas sector for a very long time. You find pipeline rupturing; we could not get what we wanted but this administration has done that. Also, our refineries are not working despite the millions of naira spent on them.
The president directed that the refineries must work and as it is the Porth Harcourt refinery is at 65-70 percent. hopefully before the end of the second quarter of the year. I believe something will come out of that refinery.”