The Group Managing Director, NNPC, Maikanti Baru, says the country’s refineries have not undergone Turn Around Maintenance for an aggregate of 42 years.

In his New Year message issued by the corporation’s spokesman, Ndu Ughamadu, in Abuja, on Monday, Baru disclosed this.

He said that in spite of the challenge, major rehabilitation works were carried out in all the three refineries.

Warri Refinery and Petrochemical Company had its Distribution Control System successfully upgraded, while the Port Harcourt Refining Company had major interventions in Fluid Catalytic Cracking Unit and Power Plant Unit fixed he noted.

He added that the Kaduna Refinery and Petrochemical Company was undergoing major repairs of its FCCU, Catalytic Reforming Unit and Crude Distillation Unit 2.

He said that efforts were ongoing to get the original builders of the refineries to carry out TAM on them after securing favourable private funding for the exercise.

The NNPC boss also said that all existing power plants across the country now had a permanent gas supply pipeline infrastructure.

He gave the assurance that the corporation would continue to expand and integrate its gas pipeline network system to meet increasing domestic gas demand.

Baru noted that significant progress had been made in the execution of the key gas pipeline infrastructure projects. According to him, they include; Escravos-Lagos Pipeline System II, Obiafu/Obrikom-Oben, Odidi-Warri Expansion Pipeline, Trans Nigeria Pipeline Project – Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano Pipeline, Trans Nigeria Pipeline Project and Nigeria-Morocco Gas Pipeline Project.

The NNPC boss also stated that the corporation would bridge the medium-term domestic gas supply deficit by 2020 through the corporation’s seven critical gas development projects, adding that a reputable project management consulting firm was collaborating with an NNPC team to achieve accelerated implementation of the projects.

He said the full implementation of the project would boost domestic gas supply from about 1.5 billion standard cubic feet per day to 5bscf/d by 2020, with a corresponding 500 per cent increase in power generation and stimulation of gas-based industrialisation.

In the downstream sector, Baru said the NNPC imported a total of 15.87 million metric tonnes of Premium Motor Spirit, otherwise called petrol, representing 62 per cent increase over the 2017 supplies of 9.8 million metric tonnes.