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The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPCL, says the new Port Harcourt refinery is over 90 per cent completed.
The Group Chief Executive Officer of the NNPCL, Mele Kyari, stated this on Monday when labour leaders from the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, and the Trade Union Congress, TUC, visited the facility in Rivers State.
The Eastern Updates recalls that After a long delay involving at least seven missed deadlines, NNPC finally activated the 60,000 barrels per day (bpd) phase one of the Port Harcourt oil refinery.
Read Also: Port Harcourt Refinery Is Still Functional – PENGASSAN Clarifies
The rehabilitation process for the total 210,000 bpd refinery began in 2021 after the federal government secured a $1.5 billion contract to fix the facility, which had been left decrepit for years.
NNPC had initially failed to make public the litres of petrol, diesel, jet fuel, and naphtha the refinery will roll out, in negation of global best practices.
However, citing public criticism, the national oil company later said it was refining 1.4 million litres of petrol per day, an extremely low figure by all estimations.
In other news, the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, PENGASSAN, has confirmed that the Port Harcourt Refinery is functional.
There were claims last week that the refinery had shut down just a few days after its much-celebrated commencement of production.
But many oil experts have come out to speak on the status of the refinery.
Similarly, in an interview on Arise TV Monday night, Comrade Festus Osifo, President of PENGASSAN, said the refinery has indeed commenced operation in full force.
Osifo, however, gave a few limitations in the production processes.
He was also quick to say that the blending process was normal globally, as no refinery can produce with a single Crude Distillation Unit (CDU).
He also said Nigerians have every reason to doubt and question the government, considering what they had suffered at the hands of past governments.