Port Harcourt refinery suffers setback, shuts down after one week operation
The Port Harcourt Refining Company has stopped operating, just weeks after it appeared to restart production.
According to a Punch report, a recent visit to the refinery on December 19, 2024, showed that the facility was no longer producing PMS.
The refinery stopped distributing gasoline on December 13. When visited, the facility’s 18-arm loading area, where trucks normally fill up with petrol, was empty. While 18 trucks were parked along the main road to the refinery and 9 more were in the parking area, none were being loaded. The usually busy depot was quiet, with almost no people or vehicles involved in operations.
On November 26, 2024, Mele Kyari, who leads the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, reopened the refinery with much celebration. The facility was supposed to produce 60,000 barrels of oil per day after receiving $1.5 billion in March 2021 for repairs.
During the reopening ceremony, some trucks were loaded with gasoline while crowds cheered. However, reports indicate only about 10 trucks received fuel that day, not the 200 trucks that some had claimed. Some sources suggest that even this fuel may have been old supply from storage tanks rather than newly refined products.
Three weeks ago, the loading area was found empty. The Petroleum Products Retail Outlets Owners Association of Nigeria explained this was due to equipment calibration and the removal of water from old fuel supplies.
During a media tour led by Managing Director Ibrahim Onoja, he stated “The plant is running and we are trucking out our products. We have carried out an extensive revamp of this plant and changed most of the equipment. The pump and instrumentation, the cables are all brand new. So what we have done here is massive change and upgrade of the plant.”
Operations improved slightly after this statement, with about 11 trucks receiving fuel one day and even more the next. However, all production stopped a week ago.
However, currently, only a few truck drivers remain at the facility, mostly sleeping in their vehicles.
The Punch said it cited a driver saying he heard loading might restart on Monday but seemed doubtful about this information. The facility is now mainly occupied by security guards in black pants and blue shirts, who stand watch at the depot entrance, loading area, and inside the facility.
