• Monday, December 02, 2024
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PH refinery operations scaled down to address technical issues – Officials

PH refinery

The operations of Port Harcourt Refining Company were not halted but were scaled down to address technical issues, refinery officials said.

Speaking during a guided tour to the refinery on Sunday, Moyi Maidunama, executive director of operations, Nigerian Pipeline and Storage Company Limited, said: “The operations were not halted. It was obviously reduced due to some improvements that we needed to make. We are managing the process with the number of trucks available today, using a few loading arms for evacuation. This should be resolved soon.”

Joel Molokwu, terminal operations manager of Port Harcourt depot, told journalists that activities were seriously going on at the facility.
He stated on record made available to BusinessDay: “We have our loading arms operational and we have been begging them (petroleum marketers) to come in since yesterday but because today is weekend that is why they have not turned up. If you give us 100 trucks today, we will evacuate them in less than five hours.

“So, it is not our problem if there are no loading trucks, it is the tanker drivers’ problem. We have been begging them since yesterday to come around and take the products but they didn’t turn up. It was just this morning after pleading with them that they came.”

Molokwu spoke alongside other refinery’s officials when the Network of Oil Producing Communities in Nigeria (NOPCN) accused the NNPCL of allegedly misleading the President and Nigerians about the operations of the Port-Harcourt refinery.

In a statement on Sunday jointly signed by Igeniwari Edward and Omototsho Ogbe, NOPCN said that petroleum products loaded from the newly rehabilitated refinery were not freshly refined but rather ‘dead stocks’ left in the storage tank since 2016.

Corroborating the comments of Timothy Mgbere, secretary of the Alesa Community Stakeholders, the Network claimed that the NNPCL evacuated the dead stocks into waiting trucks, making it seem like the refinery was producing freshly refined products.

But the NNPCL fought back when Molokwu, terminal operations manager, told the invited newsmen thus: “This is PPMC loading arm. We have 11 loading bays that are functional, but because it has a huge capacity to deliver, we are using three at the moment.

“Out of the three loading bays, each has the capacity of loading three trucks in 15 minutes. A truck is 45, 000 litres minimum. We have the ones of 60, 000 litres. Already, we have loaded more than ten trucks. So, before the close of work today (Sunday), just in the next one hour, we are going to evacuate minimum of 15 trucks.”

Molokwu stated that there were ‘surplus products’ available. He said they have called on the petroleum marketers to access the facility for quality products.

Earlier, Ibrahim Onoja, managing director of the Port Harcourt Refining Company Limited (PHRC), had dismissed the allegation that production at the refinery was halted days after it was inaugurated for resumption last week Tuesday.

The PH refinery resumption had been welcomed by jubilation before counter voices rose to claim it was false. Individuals and groups claimed that activities in the place had been halted. They further claimed that the resumption of activities was staged-managed.

The claims were made worse when Mgbere, secretary of the Alesa community stakeholders, alleged on national television that the 60,000 barrels per day capacity facility had yet to become fully operational.

He claimed that the refinery only loaded six trucks of petroleum products on the inauguration day, despite the NNPCL stating that 200 trucks would be picked up from the refinery daily.

Onoja explained that “the plant is running and trucking out products.”

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