NNPCL defends Port Harcourt refinery status, criticizes Rivers community leader

According to a Rivers State Alesa community leader, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited has refuted the assertion that fuel is not yet being produced at the Port Harcourt refinery.

In a Thursday appearance on national television, Timothy Mgbere, a purported Alesa leader, accused the NNPCL of deceiving Nigerians by claiming the refinery was already processing crude oil.

In a statement released on Friday, Olufemi Soneye, the spokesperson for the NNPCL, accused Mgbere of being blatantly ignorant of how a refinery operates and said that he would not have responded to him with dignity if it weren’t necessary to correct the records.

The previous Port Harcourt Refinery, according to Mgbere, was only barely functioning and wasn’t handling PMS. The fact that the PMS truck-out was conducted at the new Port Harcourt Refinery’s gantry rather than the old one served as his evidence.

This shows how little he knows about the refinery’s functioning. For product load-out, the old and modern Port Harcourt Refineries have subsequently been combined into a single terminal.

Power and storage tanks are among the utilities they share. This implies that goods from the Old Port Harcourt Refinery can also be delivered to the loading gantry and storage tanks that he stated were part of the new Port-Harcourt Refinery, Soneye clarified.
By claiming that the PMS that was loaded off of the purported loading gantry of the new Port Harcourt Refinery was “old stock” from the previous Port Harcourt Refinery, Mgbere contradicted himself, according to the NNPC Chief Communications Officer.
What was the process by which the alleged “old stock” was transferred from the old Port Harcourt Refinery to the loading gantry of the new one?

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For a show, the old PMS stock from the old Port Harcourt Refinery can be moved to the loading gantry of the new Port Harcourt Refinery, according to the faulty reasoning of the so-called “community person.” However, newly produced PMS from the old Port Harcourt Refinery can only be loaded at its own dedicated gantry. It is blatant illiteracy on exhibit here! Soneye made a point.

“The nameplate capacity of the refinery is 60,000 barrels of oil per day,” Soneye said in reference to the refinery’s present capacity. It is now generating at 90% throughput, which means that, in addition to other products like diesel and kerosene, 1.4 million liters of PMS are made from Straight-Run gasoline (Naptha).

“We urge the public to reject the assertions of the self-described ‘community person,’ which are clearly motivated by sheer mischievousness and flagrant ignorance,” the statement said.