The Managing Director of Port Harcourt Refinery, Mr Ibrahim Onoja, confirmed late Sunday that plant had resumed full operations after a brief “scaling down” of its activities a few days ago.
The Managing Director, who gave this hint during his interaction with journalists, explained that the facility had resumed distribution of products, including Premium Motor Spirit, kerosene, and diesel.
He explained: “The refining plant has undergone extensive upgrades to enhance efficiency and reliability which had also impacted on production capacity.
”We replaced most of the equipment including pumps installation and cables. The plant is running and we are trucking out our products”, Onoja added.
In his contribution during the media chat, the Director of Operations of the Nigeria Pipeline Storage Company (NPSC) Ltd, a subsidiary of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), Mr Moyi Maidunama, confirmed the news milling round last week that there was a temporary reduction in production.
According to him, the reduction is to help address some technical hitches in the plant with a view to enhancing petroleum products delivery capacity.
He clarified: ”We are managing the process with the number of trucks available today, using three loading arms for evacuation, this would be resolved soon.
”Our operations were not totally halted but reduced due to some of the improvements that we needed to make in terms of getting more loading arms operational.
”We have been evacuating refined petroleum products from the refinery since yesterday, and it is obviously going to be a continuous process”, the industry expert stressed.
It would be recalled that last week the reported “scaling down” of the refinery’s operations had generated controversies in the public domain as many commentators, including petroleum marketers, believed that the NNPCL’s management was not telling the truth about the current state of the re-invigorated plant that had remained comatose for about five years.
Worried by the negative comments, the Chief Corporate Communications Officer of the company, Olufemi Soneye, had to issue some statements to explain why there was no loading of trucks at the refinery and assured that the refinery would sustain its operations.
