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Mohammed Shosanya
The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC Ltd) has advised Nigerians to ignore false claims on the operational status of the Port Harcourt Refinery, particularly the ones made by a self-proclaimed community person,Timothy Mgbere .
He had alleged that the refinery is only functioning minimally and that recent truck-outs of petrol were not true.
Olufemi Soneye,Chief Corporate Communications Officer,punctured Mgbere’s claims in a statement on Friday, where clarified that the old and new refineries share integrated operations, contradicting Mgbere’s position.
He urged the public to disregard Mgbere’s statements as unfounded and ignorant.
He disclosed that the refinery is producing at 90% capacity, generating significant volumes of petrol and other products.
His statement reads:”The attention of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC Ltd) has been drawn to a video clip of one Timothy Mgbere, a self-acclaimed “community person” who alleged that the much publicised restreaming of the Port Harcourt and truck-out of Premium Motor Spirit (petrol) which held earlier in the week were all false.
“We would have not bothered to reply him considering that all his assertions were a crass display of ignorance which is consistent with his claim of being a ‘community person’ who does not necessarily have any knowledge about the workings of the Port Harcourt Refinery. But the need to set the records straight and not to mislead the public has constrained us to clarify as follows:
“He claimed that the Old Port Harcourt Refinery was only operating skeletally and was not processing PMS. 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.
“The same person who claimed that the Old Port Harcourt Refinery has its own separate loading gantry from that of the New Port Harcourt Refinery further went on to contradict himself by saying that the PMS that was loaded out from the supposed loading gantry of the New Port Harcourt Refinery was “old stock” from the Old Port Harcourt Refinery. 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!
“There are a number of other wild claims made by the man, one of which was that the refinery was producing 1.4million 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) belnded into 1.4million 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”.
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