An Alesa village leader in Rivers State said that the Port Harcourt refinery was not yet generating fuel, but the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited refuted this.
As you may remember, on Thursday, Timothy Mgbere, a purported Alesa leader, came on national television and accused the NNPCL of deceiving Nigerians by claiming the refinery was already processing crude oil.
Olufemi Soneye, the spokesperson for the NNPCL, accused Mgbere of being blatantly ignorant of how a refinery operates in a statement released on Friday. He said that if he hadn’t had to correct the records, he wouldn’t have given him a respectful response.
According to Mgbere, the old Port Harcourt Refinery was not processing PMS and was only barely functioning. He provided evidence that the PMS truck-out was conducted at the new Port Harcourt Refinery’s gantry rather than the old one.
This demonstrates his limited understanding of the refinery’s functioning. Since then, a single terminal for product load-out has been connected with the old and new Port Harcourt Refineries.
“They have storage tanks and electricity in common. Soneye clarified, “This implies that products from the Old Port Harcourt Refinery can also be received by the loading gantry and storage tanks that he claimed belonged to the new Port-Harcourt Refinery.
Mgbere contradicted himself when he said that the PMS that was loaded out of the purported loading gantry of the new Port Harcourt Refinery was “old stock” from the previous Port Harcourt Refinery, according to the NNPC Chief Communications Officer.
How, therefore, did the alleged “old stock” get transferred from the old Port Harcourt Refinery to the new refinery’s loading gantry?
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According to the faulty reasoning of the so-called “community person,” newly produced PMS from the old Port Harcourt Refinery can only be loaded at its own dedicated gantry, while old PMS stock from the old Port Harcourt Refinery can be moved to the loading gantry of the new Port-Harcourt Refinery for a show. This is just blatant ignorance on show. Soneye emphasized.
Regarding the refinery’s present capacity, Soneye said, “The refinery’s nameplate capacity is 60,000 barrels of oil per day.” In addition to other products like diesel and kerosene, it is currently generating at a 90% throughput, which corresponds to Straight-Run gasoline (Naptha) combined into 1.4 million liters of PMS.
The statement ended, “We urge the public to reject the assertions of the self-described ‘community person,’ which are clearly the result of sheer mischievousness and flagrant ignorance.”
