Fire on Thursday gutted a part of Kaduna refinery, injuring two workers of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and burning two tankers.
The NNPC, which confirmed the incident “at the truck park near the Kaduna Refinery,” said it did not affect the operations of the refinery in anyway.
The corporation’s Acting Group General Manager Public Affairs Division, Dr. Omar Farouk Ibrahim, said in a statement on Thursday that the park where the fire incident occurred is some distance away from the Kaduna Refinery Complex.
The NNPC, the statement read, “has announced that there was a fire incident earlier in the day at the truck park near the Kaduna Refinery in which two tankers got burnt and two persons were injured.”
The statement continued: “We, therefore, urge members of the public not to engage in panic buying as neither production nor distribution of petroleum products from the refinery was affected in anyway by the fire incident.
“The two persons who sustained injuries in the incident are currently receiving treatment at our clinic. Investigation has commenced to determine the cause of the fire”, he added.
The decision to construct the third NNPC refinery in Kaduna was taken in 1974 along with that of a second plant located at Warri. By early 1975, in view of the fuel shortages experienced then, the Federal Government decided that work on the third refinery should be advanced. It was envisaged that the refinery was to be a simple hydro skimming type refinery in order to meet up with the fuel demand then.
Based on the feasibility studies carried out, which took into consideration the consumption of the various petroleum products within the Northern Zone, and adequate means of disposal for the surplus products, a Refinery with crude oil capacity of 42,000 barrels per stream day (BPSD) could be easily justified. Hence, the refinery was designed for a capacity of 60,000 BPSD. It was much later that the Federal Government decided that the capacity for any refinery in Nigeria should not be below 100,000 BPSD. However, this would have led to the production of large quantity of heavy ends. And one practical and viable solution is reprocessing the heavy fuel oils.
In order to do this, the whole project plans had to be modified so that what initially was planned to be simply a hydro skimming type refinery, developed into an integrated refinery. The refinery would now be able to produce a wider variety of petroleum products, some of which should be lubricating base oils. Hence, it became necessary to import suitable paraffinic based crude oil from Venezuela, Kuwait or Saudi Arabia.
Products from the refinery include: Fuels for use as Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), Automotive Gas Oil (AGO) or Diesel oil, Kerosene, Fuel Oil, Sulphur and those from the lubricating oils complex are Base Oils, Asphalt (Bitumen) and Waxes.
The lubricating oil complex of Kaduna Refinery is the first of its kind in West Africa and one of the largest in Africa. The consulting firm, KING WILKINSON of Hague, Holland, in conjunction with NNPC engineers, developed the plan for the refinery. The contract for construction was awarded to Chiyoda Chemical Engineering & Construction Company of Yokohama, Japan in 1977.
The Refinery project was completed and the fuels plant commissioned in 1980. However the lubes plant was commissioned in 1983 and petrochemical plant much later in 1988. The initial operation and maintenance was carried out by Nigerian staff and expatriate personnel as technical back up. By 1985, Nigerian staff had virtually taken over all the maintenance and operations.
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