The Port Harcourt refinery has resumed full operations after a brief ”scaling down”, Mr Ibrahim Onoja, the company’s Managing Director has said.
Addressing newsmen after a facility tour of the refinery on Sunday night, Onoja said the facility had resued distribution of products, including Premium Motor Spirit, kerosene, and diesel.
”The refining plant has undergone extensive upgrades to enhance efficiency and reliability which had also impacted on production capacity.
”We replaced most of the equipment including pumps installation and cables.
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“The plant is running and we are trucking out our products,” he said.
Also speaking, Mr Moyi Maidunama, the Director of Operations of the Nigeria Pipeline Storage Company(NPSC) Ltd acknowledged that there was a temporary reduction in production.
He, however, explained that the reduction was to help address some technical issues aimed at improving the delivery capacity of the facility.
”We are managing the process with the number of trucks available today, using three loading arms for evacuation, this would be resolved soon.
”Our operations were not totally halted but reduced due to some of the improvements that we needed to make in terms of getting more loading arms operational.
”We have been evacuating refined petroleum products from the refinery since yesterday and its obviously going to be a continuous process,” he said.
Mr Worlu Joel, the terminal manager, also confirmed the efficiency of the refinery, adding that it had began loading of Premium Motor Spirit, kerosene and diesel.
According to him, the deport which has eleven functional loading bays currently uses only three due to its high efficiency.
He said that each of the bay evacuates as much as three trucks in 15 minutes.
He however, expressed worries over slow turn out of tanker drivers
”We have suplus product. Let us sayd we have up to 100 trucks today, we will evacuate them in a five hours, Its no longer our problem, its the tanker drivers,”he said.