Despite recent reports, the Port Harcourt Refining Company did not stop its operations, but reduced them to fix some technical problems, according to refinery officials on Sunday.
Moyi Maidunama, the Executive Director of Operations at the Nigerian Pipeline and Storage Company Limited, said that the decrease in operations was needed to make some improvements. “We are handling the situation with the trucks we have now, using a few loading arms to move the products. This should be fixed soon,” Maidunama explained.
Joel Molokwu, the Terminal Operations Manager at the Port Harcourt Depot, also confirmed that work was happening at the facility. “Our loading arms are working, and we’ve been asking petroleum marketers to come since yesterday, but since today is the weekend, they haven’t shown up,” Molokwu said.
Molokwu stressed that the refinery can load 100 trucks in less than five hours.
“If you give us 100 trucks today, we will evacuate them in less than five hours. So, if there are no trucks to load, that’s not our issue; it’s the tanker drivers’ issue,” he explained.
This clarification came after the Network of Oil Producing Communities in Nigeria (NOPCN) accused the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) of allegedly misleading the President and Nigerians about the operations of the Port Harcourt refinery.
On Sunday, NOPCN said that the petroleum products taken from the newly rehabilitated refinery were not freshly refined but were actually old supplies that had been in storage since 2016.
But NNPCL disagreed with this statement. Molokwu said the refinery has extra products available. “We’ve asked petroleum sellers to use the facility for good products,” he mentioned.
Ibrahim Onoja, the head of the Port Harcourt Refining Company Limited (PHRC), also said that the refinery did not stop producing just days after it started. “The plant is working and trucking out products,” Onoja stated.
