The House of Representatives Ad Hoc Committee on the State of Refineries in Nigeria on Friday evening questioned top officials of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, renamed Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, as part of the ongoing inquiry into the refineries collapse.

The NNPC assured the committee that the Port Harcourt refinery’s current restoration will be finished by March 2023.

Mele Kyari, Group Managing Director of NNPC, stated that the rehabilitation, for which a contract was granted on May 6, 2021, had reached a 30% completion level.

He also said that while a portion of the project will be done in 32 months, the full project would be completed in 42 months.

Kyari, who was represented by the Group General Manager, Refineries & Petrochemicals, Mustapha Yakubu, however, disclosed that the contracts for the rehabilitation of the Warri and Kaduna refineries had not been awarded. He also stated that the contract for the survey of the refineries followed due process.

There was a mild drama at the investigative hearing on the cost of a new refinery with a production capacity of 150,000 barrels per day.

The committee requested the Federal Executive Council’s approval of the $1.5bn for the Port Harcourt refinery, approval of various expenditures incurred on the 26th July 2017, worth $5.321 million for comprehensive technical plans, as well as another $55m paid on the same day.

The lawmakers were dissatisfied with the response from Sapien Engineering Company, which was awarded the contract for the thorough technical assessment of the Port Harcourt refinery for $135 million, with an extra £2.3 million for the examination of both the Warri and Kaduna refineries.

After reviewing the records presented to the committee by NNPC, the lawmakers discovered that comparable contracts for the three refineries were awarded to another business (Technomont) in 2019.

Ahmed Dikko, the Managing Director of Port Harcourt Refinery, revealed that the whole conversion facility would cost $4.5 billion and would be completed in five years.

However, the lawmaker Saif noted that a similar project in America would cost $90 million.