Lagos — The Federal Government says it has spent a about $57.9 million on the Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) of the Kaduna Refinery, which was temporarily shut down last week.

Managing Director of the refinery, Olayinka Agoro, who stated this maintained that these expenses were made to ensure that Kaduna refinery reaches its optimum capacity of 60,000 barrels per day (bpd).

The federal government, according to him, has so far spent $35million for the TAM and another $22.9 million for the services.

The plant was processing 42,000 barrels per day before it was temporary shut down for the maintenance and servicing. "But when we finish the TAM, we are going to try up to 100 percent capacity;" he said.

On delay in the biennial time-schedule for the maintenance, Agoro said: "Normally, strategically, as the refineries are, TAM is supposed to be done every two years; but when we started these refineries in 1980, we did the first TAM in 1982 with Chiyoda. In 1984, we had another one. Then when the Group Managing Director (GMD) was changed, we got a GMD from NEPA. It was then everybody started knowing about TAM.

"It was never known to the press. We just call the contractor, organize it within ourselves and with staff from Warri and Port Harcourt, everything is done within. But, later, over the years, they started politicizing TAM. That was how it started drifting to the extent that in 1998, the government in power unilaterally handed it over to TOTAL," Agoro explained.

Continuing he said: "These are units that have been down from 2006. In short we were already written off. The contract was with former President Olusegun Obasanjo and he said since they were going to sell it, (KRPC), they should forget about it. It was when this new administration revoked the contract that we finally got the approval. And that took us from January to July. We cannot stay idle when the crude line has already been repaired."

This long delay in TAM, it would be recalled, has robbed the refinery of 30 percent performance as it only operated at 70 per cent capacity with a lot of leakages.

This also paralyzed many industries, which depended on materials from the KRPC.

"Up till today, it is this TAM that we are still trying to make sure it is properly done. After this one, we hope we would follow the statutory way of doing things. With this new dispensation, we are finishing this one this year. Port Harcourt has been scheduled for early 2010. We are going to follow that schedule religiously during this dispensation. The crude is coming all the way from Warri. The products here are a combination of crudes.

"Warri is just coming back since that line was vandalized. Warri is now on and every extra crude will now be pushed to Kaduna . We will make sure that all our tanks are filled so that when we are ready, we will make sure we are running continuously;" the KRPC MD said.