…Says claims are crass display of ignorance
Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC Ltd) said it did not issue misleading information to the Nigerian public on the true situation of operations at the Port Harcourt Refinery.
The company, therefore, refuted allegations made by Timothy Mgbere, who referred himself in a video clip as a community representative, regarding the operations of the Port Harcourt Refinery.
Mgbere in the video clip, claimed that the recent announcements by NNPC about the refinery’s restreaming and petrol distribution were false, describing them as mere public displays without substantial backing.
In a press statement signed by its Chief Corporate Communications Officer, Olufemi Soneye, on Friday, November 29, 2024, NNPC dismissed the assertions of Mgbere as uninformed.
It lamented being drawn to a video clip by 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.
The company said it would have not bothered to reply the message in the clip but considering that all the assertions in it 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.
NNPC noted that it had to reply to the message for the need to set the records straight and not to mislead the public.
According to the NNPC, the claim that the Old Port Harcourt Refinery was only operating skeletally and was not processing PMS was not true, saying the video proof 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 betrays Mgbere’s scant knowledge of the operations of the refinery.
The Old and New Port Harcourt Refineries, NNPC insists, have since been integrated with one single terminal for products load-out, saying they share common utilities like power and storage tanks.
It said the storage tanks and loading gantry claimed belongs to the New Port-Harcourt Refinery and can also receive products from the Old Port Harcourt Refinery.
NNPC said 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.
If this is so, the oil company questioned how the purported “old stock” moved from the Old Port Harcourt Refinery to the loading gantry of the New Port Harcourt Refinery.
It said 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, it said, is nothing but ignorance on full display.
The NNPC disclosed that there are a number of other wild claims made by Mgbere, one of which was that the refinery was producing 1.4 million barrels per day, saying that the nameplate capacity of the refinery is 60,000barrels of oil per day.
The Nigerian oil company noted that it is currently producing at 90 per cent throughput which translates to Straight-Run Gasoline (Naphtha) blended into 1.4million litres of PMS, aside other products like diesel and kerosene.
It appealed to the general public to disregard the claims of the self-acclaimed ‘community person’ which it said were obviously borne out of sheer mischief and blatant display of ignorance.