Contrary to the impression that the newly rehabilitated Port Harcourt Refinery has started churning out freshly refined products, Timothy Mgbere, Secretary of the Alesa community stakeholders, has claimed that the petroleum products loaded from the facility had been left in the storage tank in the last three years.

Mgbere also alleged that only six trucks were loaded from the refinery gantry on Tuesday, November 26, 2024, against the 200 trucks touted by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), the facility’s operator.

He made these revelations while appearing as a guest on Thursday's edition of Arise TV's Morning Show.

Alasa, which is one of the 10 major communities in Eleme in Rivers State, is the host community of the Port Harcourt Refinery complex.

After years of staying moribund, the multi-million dollar facility resumed operations on Tuesday, eliciting initial praise from Nigerians and industry stakeholders.

According to the NNPCL, the 60,000-capacity Port-Harcourt Refinery, which had been revamped and upgraded with modern equipment, would be operating at a refining capacity of 70 per cent of its installed capacity.

The national oil company added that diesel and Pour Fuel Oil would be the highest output from the facility, with a daily capacity of 1.5 million litres and 2.1 million litres, respectively.

At the same, the refinery is also expected to produce a daily output of Straight-Run Gasoline (Naphtha) blended into 1.4 million litres of Premium Motor Spirit (petrol), 900,000 litres of kerosene, and low-pour fuel oil of 2.1 million litres.

The company stated that about 200 trucks of petrol would be released into the Nigerian market daily.

Host community counters NNPCL over Port Harcourt Refinery claims

But the Secretary described the fanfare thrown by the NPCL for resumption of operations at the refinery as a mere "party," stressing that the full units of the old complex are not functional.

”The Port Harcourt refinery, and by extension, the Port Harcourt depot, happens to be the mainstay of the Alesa community economy, the economic activities emanating from the operations of these depots mean a lot to us as a community people, but as it were, now, I don’t think it’s a cause for celebration yet, because what we are having in the media space is different from what we have on the ground," he said during the interview.

“I can tell you on authority as a community person, that what happened on Tuesday was just a mere show at the Port Harcourt depot.

“A mere show in the sense that the Port Harcourt refinery, we call it area five, that is the old refinery, is merely in skeletal operation.

“When I say skeletal, I mean that some units of the refinery were recently brought up and are running, but not the entire unit of the old refinery is functional, as we speak.

“I will give them the credit that at least they have started something, but not to say, according to the Head of Corporate Communication of the NNPC limited, Femi Soneye, like it is in the media that they are already producing 1.4m barrels per day. That’s not the case. That’s not true.

“It’s a very big, I don’t want to use the word lie, but as an agency that is holding the oil industry on trust for Nigerians, they shouldn’t put out some of this information that is not true.”