Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. subsidiary Port Harcourt Refining Co. Ltd. has secured support for uninterrupted power supply to its Port Harcourt refining complex—which includes a 60,000-b/sd hydroskimming refinery and 150,000-b/sd full-conversion refinery—in Rivers State, Nigeria.
GEL Utility Ltd. (GELUL)—which helps generate power requirements for the Port Harcourt refinery—has signed a 12-year service agreement with General Electric International Inc.’s power services group to support power-generation needs of the refinery, including provision of parts, spares, repairs, and services over two major inspection cycles for three units of GE’s TM2500 aeroderivative gas turbines earlier installed at GELUL’s plant site in March 2015, GE said.
Because of the agreement, the state-owned refinery will have an optimal power supply needed to run its plant reliably and efficiently by enabling operators to avert frequent interruptions and instabilities due to technical problems related to faulty equipment or an unstable electricity grid.
The GE TM2500 distributed-power units will also provide the power-generation plant the ability to frequently and rapidly ramp up to meet load and demand fluctuations, reducing potential operational downtime at the refinery, GE said.
The GE contract follows NNPC’s announcement last year that GE was considering a proposed investment in NNPC’s program to modernize and expand Nigeria’s three state-owned refineries, which include PHRC’s Port Harcourt refinery, as well as subsidiaries Warri Refining & Petrochemical Co. Ltd.’s 125,000-b/sd Warri refinery in Delta State and Kaduna Refining & Petrochemical Co. Ltd.’s 110,000-b/sd refinery in Kaduna State (OGJ Online, Feb. 2, 2017).
Alongside partnering in the refinery rehabilitation program, GE and NNPC also are were exploring the scope of GE’s participation in several major Nigerian power projects that could add a combined capacity of about 4.4 Gw to the national power grid.
The potential GE partnering comes as part of a series of other recent initiatives by NNPC to aggressively advance its rehabilitation-and-expansion program at Nigeria’s state-owned refineries in order to meet the country’s domestic demand for fuels and curb its reliance on foreign imports (OGJ Online, Aug. 31, 2018).
Contact Robert Brelsford at [email protected].
