A Review of Performance Appraisals of Nigerian Federal Government-Owned Refineries

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to review previous works on the performance appraisal of Nigerian government-owned refineries. The review has been done in a general sense, covering appraisal works by engineers, scientists, management experts, economists, sociologists and even historians. The outcome indicates that while there seems to be several works directly and/or indirectly assessing the performance of the refineries in a general sense, there is a dearth of such in the specific area of energy consumption. There also appears to be no single one appraising energy utilisation of all the refineries at the same time in the open literature. This is in spite of the fact that refining processes are energy intensive. Despite popularisation of exergy analysis as a veritable tool, the only energy utilisation appraisal within our reach which was carried out on just one of the refineries has not been done exergetically. However, the work still reveals, within the limitations of 1st Law energy analysis that the energy consumption patterns are below international benchmarks in the oil and gas industry. Some suggestions have also been offered to take care of the energy efficiency challenges in these refineries. These include plant to plant analyses of energy utilisation patterns in the four refineries, periodical determination of GHG emission levels in the refineries using current international best practices as benchmarks, use of exergy analysis to check avoidable energy wastage in the refining processes, shifting refinery fuelling pattern in favour of low carbon content fuels like natural gas and ensuring regular turnaround maintenance of the system

Analysis of multi-factors affecting the performance of Nigeria's refineries: a systems thinking approach

“…Consequently, it would be logical for the government to expect some returns from these refineries either in terms of monetary profits or national energy security. However, few of these expected benefits can be argued to have been achieved given the prolonged poor performance of the refineries (Akinola, 2018; Badmus et al , 2012).…”

“…However, none of the refineries have coking capabilities as most modern refineries do (Cross et al , 2013). It is important to note that a lot of the equipment components in these refineries have become outdated and as such present performance challenges (Badmus et al , 2012; Eti et al , 2006).…”

“…Consequently, it would be logical for the government to expect some returns from these refineries either in terms of monetary profits or national energy security. However, few of these expected benefits can be argued to have been achieved given the prolonged poor performance of the refineries (Akinola, 2018;Badmus et al, 2012). Some of the economic factors that have contributed to difficulties in maintaining the refineries include high cost of spare parts, volatile exchange rates, low or non-existent profit margins and problems associated with subsidy issues in Nigeria (Akinola, 2018;Ogbuiwe, 2018;Babatunde, 2015).…”

“…For example, Hosseini and Stefaniec (2019) used a two-stage slacks-based framework to evaluate the efficiency of Iranian oil refineries using operational and profitability subunits. Badmus et al (2012) applied the exergy analysis technique to analyse the fuel-mix and energy utilisation patterns in the Port Harcourt refinery as a means of determining their operational efficiency. This study adopted the concept of capacity utilisation as a performance measure for the NNPC refineries.…”

Fuel‐mix and energy utilization analysis of Port Harcourt Refining Company, Nigeria

“…As observed by Badmus et al. while appraising Jesuleye et al. , despite apparent preponderance of literature on general assessments of Nigerian refineries in the open literature, only this recent one by Jesuleye et al.…”