Kola Ologbondiyan
16 December 2004
Abuja — The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) yesterday informed the Senate Committee on Petroleum Resources (Down stream) that the turn-around maintenance of Port Harcourt refineries carried out by Chrome Energy Consortium was performed to specifications.
NNPC Group Executive Director (Petro-chemical and Refineries), Mr. Abubakar Yar'Adua told the committee that "we are completely satisfied with the job done by Chrome based on the contractual obligations." He noted that the explosion of Fluid Catalytic Cracker (FCC), which is the heartbeat of the refinery, shortly after the completion of the turn around maintenance was responsible for the collapse of the refineries.
Absolving the contractor, Chrome Energy Consortium, of blames in the functionality or otherwise of the refinery, Yar'Adua maintained that before the FCC explosion, the refineries were producing 92 per cent of their installed capacity.He however blamed the explosion on the attitude of inexperienced operators.
However, Managing Dire-ctor, Shell Nigeria Oil Production, Mr. Humphrey Doody, who also participated at yesterday's session of the pre-public hearing sitting, was categorical that his company was not one of the participants in the turn around maintenance project but only served on the invitation of NNPC to provide technical guidance and support to the corporation because of its experience in refinery operations.
"Shell was not involved in choosing the contractor. Our relationship was strictly between us and the Corporation. What Shell did was to share with the NNPC, ideas on how the scope of work could be amended to address specific problems," Doody said.
Maintaining that his company made several suggestions to the NNPC and pointed out certain areas of defects that should be catered for in the turn around maintenance, Doody said Shell was comfortable with performance of the job even though "there are undoubtedly some problems."
Earlier, the Chrome team, led by its Chairman, Chief Emeka Offor, told the Agboti Committee that the scope of the turn around maintenance was prepared and handed down to the company by the NNPC.
Dr. Mircea Furtos, Chrome's Project Manager, explained that there were two stages of certification in the course of the project performance. He added that the first was the certificate of mechanical completion issued after the stage-by-stage verification of the job performed while the second was issued on completion of the period of liability.
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