Mkpoikana Udoma
Port Harcourt — The Managing Director of the Port Harcourt Refining Company Limited, PHRC, Ibrahim Onoja, has rejected claims that production at the refinery was halted shortly after its resumption last week.
This comes amid rumours that the facility had ceased operations just days after being inaugurated.
The refinery was officially reopened last Tuesday by the Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPCL, Mele Kyari, who announced that the plant would be evacuating up to 200 trucks of petrol daily.
However, some industry stakeholders, including members of the host communities, alleged that the refinery was not fully operational, citing that only six trucks were loaded on the inauguration day, far below the expected daily target.
During a tour of the refinery in Eleme, Rivers State, yesterday, the Managing Director of PHRC, Ibrahim Onoja disclosed to newsmen that the facility was actively loading products, with more than 10 trucks at the loading bay.
Onoja who led the journalists on the tour, said “the plant is running and trucking out products,” emphasizing that the refinery was fully operational and dismissed the claims of a shutdown.
Also speaking, the Terminal Manager of Port Harcourt depot, Molokwuu Joel who also told journalists that activities is seriously going on at the facility, said in less than 15 minutes, the loading bay trucks out three 45,000 liters perolt tankers.
He said: “This is PPMC loading arm. We have 11 loading bay that are functional, but because it has a huge capacity to deliver, we are using three at the moment.
“Out of the three loading bay, each one 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.”
Molokwuu revealed that there are surplus products available. He said they have called on the petroleum marketers to access the facility for quality products.
“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 it in less than 5 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”, Molokwuu said.
Similarly, the Executive Director, Operations, Nigeria Pipelines and Storage Company Limited, Moyi Maidunama, explained that product evacuation was proceeding smoothly.
He said, “As you are seeing here, you are witnessing the truck load out, we have been doing this since morning. We are evacuating the refined product from the refinery and this is obviously going to be a continuous process. We have done couple of trucks today and intend to do many more today.
“Operations were not halted, it was actually reduced due to some improvements that we needed to make and we have been able to do very much, though there is a lot more than we can do in terms of getting more loading arms operational but we are managing due to the number of trucks they we have available today. So we are using few loading arms to execute the number of trucks we have today.”
The Chief Security Officer of Alesa Eleme, Dibia Isaiah who dismissed the claims on the state of the refinery stressed “Everybody is seeing it live and direct that production is on. I suspect it was the enemy of this rehabilitation that is going that is peddling the rumours.
“I am one of the loaders from the host community, I have loaded four trucks this morning, yesterday, now we are loading tomorrow, there is no time we will not load. This time is a very busy period us. I wonder how people are giving out fake information just to rundown the management. It is not good. I want to urge Nigerians to disregard such rumours.”
