The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited has debunked claims made by Timothy Mgbere, the Secretary of the Alesa community stakeholders, regarding the operations of the Port Harcourt Refinery.
Recall that Mgbere on Arise Television on Thursday claimed that the recently revitalised resumption of refining operations and truck-out of petroleum products were filled with lies.
He alleged that the truck out petroleum products from Port Harcourt Refinery were from old stock, not freshly refined product.
But reacting to the development, the NNPC Spokesperson, Femi Soneye said while the company 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 necessitated the response.
The statement, “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.
“There are a number of other wild claims made by the man, one of which was that the refinery was producing 1.4 million 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.”