NNPC Disclaims Community Resident’s Comments on P’Harcourt Refinery

Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja

The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC) Friday described as ‘crass display of ignorance’, comments credited to a resident of the Alesa-Eleme community, where the Power Harcourt refinery is located.

The national oil company, in a statement in Abuja by its spokesman, Olufemi Soneye, said it was aware that one Timothy Mgbere characterised the much publicised re-streaming of the Port Harcourt and truck-out of petrol as false.

According to Soneye, the remarks by Mgbere were also consistent with his claim of being a ‘community person’ who he alleged does not necessarily have any knowledge about the workings of the Port Harcourt Refinery.

Soneye pointed out that Mgbere’s claim that the Old Port Harcourt Refinery was only operating skeletally and was not processing petrol was baseless.

“His proof was that the PMS truck-out was done at the gantry of the New Port Harcourt Refinery as against the gantry of the Old Port Harcourt Refinery. This betrays his scant knowledge of the operations of the refinery.

“ The Old and New Port Harcourt Refineries have since been integrated with one single terminal for products load-out. They share common utilities like power and storage tanks.

“ This means that storage tanks and loading gantry which he claimed belongs to the New Port-Harcourt Refinery can also receive products from the Old Port Harcourt Refinery,” he added.

The NNPC stressed that the same person who claimed that the old facility has its own separate loading gantry from that of the new one further went on to contradict himself by saying that the petrol that was loaded from the supposed loading gantry of the new refinery was “old stock” from the old one.

“So, how did the purported old stock move from the Old Port Harcourt Refinery to the loading gantry of the New Port Harcourt Refinery? Going by the flawed argument of the so-called ‘community person’, ‘old PMS stock’ from the Old Port Harcourt Refinery can be moved to the loading gantry of the New Port-Harcourt Refinery for show, but newly produced PMS from the Old Port-Harcourt Refinery can only be loaded at its own dedicated gantry. This is nothing but ignorance on full display,” Soneye said.

He observed that there were a number of other ‘wild claims’ made by the man, one of which he said was that the refinery was producing 1.4 million barrels per day.

“The nameplate capacity of the refinery is 60,000barrels of oil per day. It is currently producing at 90 per cent throughput which translates to Straight-Run Gasoline (Naptha) blended into 1.4 million litres of PMS, aside other products like diesel and kerosene.

“We call on the general public to disregard the claims of the self-acclaimed ‘community person’ which are obviously borne out of sheer mischief and blatant display of ignorance,” Soneye said.