A pall of doubt has been cast on the claims made by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) on the operational status of the newly rehabilitated Port Harcourt Refining Company.
The host community of the refinery alleged that the products lifted from the refinery on Tuesday were three years old and were from the storage facility within the refinery.
The Secretary of the Alesa community stakeholders, Timothy Mgbere, alleged that contrary to the claims by the NNPCL, the 60,000 barrels per day capacity facility had yet to become fully operational.
Alesa is one of the 10 major communities in Eleme, Rivers State where the Port Harcourt refinery is situated.
Again, contrary to the claim by the NNPCL that 200 trucks would lift fuel daily, Mgbere alleged that the refinery only loaded six trucks of petroleum products on Tuesday.
The secretary of Alesa community stakeholders made the disclosures when he was featured as a guest on Arise TV on Thursday.
The NNPCL spokesperson, Femi Soneye, did not respond to enquiries.
Nigeria was agog on Tuesday when news filtered in that 60,000 bpd-capacity Port-Harcourt refinery resumed operations after years of inactivity.
The NNPC announced that the revamped facility was operating at a refining capacity of 70 per cent of its installed capacity.
The company further disclosed that diesel and Pour Fuel Oil would be the highest output from the refinery, with a daily capacity of 1.5 million litres and 2.1 million litres, respectively.
NNPC projected a daily output of Straight-Run Gasoline (Naphtha) blended into 1.4 million litres of Premium Motor Spirit (petrol), 900,000 litres of kerosene, and low-pour fuel oil of 2.1 million litres.
The facility was expected to release about 200 trucks of petrol into the Nigerian market every day.
Mgbere, however, insisted that the facility was not operational. He described the recent ceremony for the unveiling of the plant as a mere “party”.
“The Port Harcourt refinery, and by extension, the Port Harcourt depot, happens to be the mainstay of the Alesa community economy. The economic activities emanating from the operations of these depots mean a lot to us as a community people, but as it were, now, I don’t think it’s a cause for celebration yet because what we are having in the media space is different from what we have on the ground,” Mgbere said.
He added:
“I can tell you on authority as a community person, that what happened on Tuesday was just a mere show at the Port Harcourt depot. A mere show in the sense that the Port Harcourt refinery, we call it area five, that is the old refinery, is merely in skeletal operation. When I say skeletal, I mean that some units of the refinery were brought up and are running, but not the entire unit of the old refinery is functional, as we speak.
“I will give them the credit that at least they have started something, but not to say, according to the Head of Corporate Communication, Femi Soneye, like it is in the media that they are already producing 1.4m barrels per day. That’s not the case. That’s not true. I don’t want to use the word lie, but as an agency that is holding the oil industry in trust for Nigerians, they shouldn’t put out information that is not true.”
He argued that “the true picture of what happened on Tuesday is that the NNPC has been under pressure to televise to Nigerians that everything is okay and that the old refinery has started functioning.
“I can tell you that the MD or the CEO of the refinery, was in Port Harcourt since Monday; the other MDs were also in Port Harcourt. The MD of Port Harcourt refinery and those heading the operations department didn’t sleep through the night of Monday to Tuesday because of the whole event they had on Tuesday.
“What is the true picture? The Old Port Harcourt refinery is built with its utilities, different from the new complex. The tank farm that is servicing the Old Port Harcourt refinery has a different loading gantry at the depot.”
Continuing, he said, “The party they had on Tuesday was held at the new loading gantry that is directly connected to the new refinery. And so, how does that work? It is impossible. The feedstock storage facility for the old refinery had some stock, old stock that has been there for over three years.
“And so what they did was to release that stock, and then loaded six trucks and then televised it to Nigerians that it is the production from the old refinery. That’s not true. And so I like Nigerians to know the truth, but they don’t need to believe me, because Nigerians, no matter how you paint the true pictures to them, they get sentimental. They get tribalistic. They want to whip some sentiment and all that the product that was loaded. But let it be on record that it was only six trucks that they used to calibrate the new loading gantry. The product was not a new refined product from the old refinery.”
He countered the claim that the refinery is now producing 1.4 million barrels of petrol per day and urged the NNPCL to stop giving out false information to deceive Nigerians.
The secretary also faulted the claim that the refinery was automated.
He said, “As of yesterday (Wednesday), they also loaded. But let me shock you if we are celebrating that the Port Harcourt old refinery is already functioning. How come they loaded only four trucks of product the whole day? I mean, starting from 7 am when work resumed at the depot, it was all only four trucks that were loaded till about 8 pm of Wednesday.
“And they said it’s automated. How can you have a truck under a bay for more than six hours under an automated system? Back in the years when we had a manual loading system, It didn’t take 45 minutes, but under an automated system, it took more than four hours. And then you tell us, it is 70 per cent operational, but you are loading four trucks for a whole day, one truck staying under the loading gantry for more than six to seven hours. Who are they deceiving?”
Magbere said the contractor handling the project was incompetent and the cause of the whole problem.
He noted, “You have a situation where the contractor of this project doesn’t have one single piece of equipment on the ground. The company subleased this contract to numerous subcontractors, who in turn subleased this contract to other contractors. I can tell you that to a very large extent, the result that has been achieved so far in this rehabilitation project was done by local contractors.”
