Amidst scarcity of Kerosene in the North, Kaduna Refining and Petrochemical Company (KRPC), on Tuesday said it had dispatched more than 19 million litres of the product into the market between January to date.
The Managing Director, Mr Idi Mukhtar made the disclosure when the House of Representatives Committee on Petroleum Sector, Down Stream visited the company on oversight.
According to him, more than 70 million litres of petrol, over 40 million litres of diesel and 860,000 litres of Lube oil was also released into the market this year.
He told the committee that the company had resumed production after the repair of the crude oil supply pipeline (Line 2C) gutted by fire at Aku near Lokoja.
The managing director assured that the resumption of production would stabilise the market and bridge growing demands of the products in the region.
Mukhtar, however, lamented that the refinery’s efforts to increase production was being hampered by obsolete instruments and poor budget.
“We are also facing issues of encroachment into the NNPC lands and raw water intake right of way.”
He said that the raw water intake and illegal tappings had affected activities of the company resulting to high cost of energy generation due to water losses.
The managing director told the committee that, in spite of the challenges, the plant plans re-stream its facilities to “produce Kero Solvent and normal parafins before the end of the first quarter 2017.”
He said the KRPC had commenced the rehabilitation on its Kerosene Hydrodesulphurisation unit for the production of aviation fuel by the end of the second quarter.
According to him, various rehabilitaion works are going on to enable the plant process Nigerian and foreign crude, as well as guarrantee sustainability of its operations.
On his part, the chairman of the committee, Joseph Akinjala pledged that the House of Representatives would ensure adequate appropriation of funds to the refinery, to stabilise production and supply.
Akinjala also said that the committee would come up with a legislation to ensure that the Kaduna refinery was upgraded to global standard.
He said measures were being taken to address the challenges of the downstream sector as oil is remained the backbone of the nation’s economy.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the committee members were taken round the plant including the Fuel Loading point where 80 trucks of Fuel, 80 trucks of Desiel and 50 trucks of Kerosene were expected to be evacuated by the end of Tuesday.(NAN)