Port Harcourt Refinery Back on production, Producing Five Million Litres Daily

The lingering fuel scarcity which has crippled many economic activities will soon become a thing of the past

This is as the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has disclosed that the Port Harcourt Refinery has resumed production of five million litres of petrol daily.

The reopening of the nation's largest refining outfit would be regarded as a major boost as the Federal Government continues the fight to end the crippling shortages that have now entered into its third month.

Speaking with journalists after monitoring exercise,The Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs of the NNPC, Garuba Deen Muhammad, and inspection of some petrol stations in Abuja with the Executive Director, Supply and Distribution, Nigerian Petroleum Marketing Company (NPMC), Justine Ezeala, that normalcy in fuel supply would soon return.

He said that, "Port Harcourt has been refining for quite a while now, from last week, between three and five million litres. We expect Kaduna refinary to begin any time soon and we also have vessels discharging fuel and so, all these combined measures will bring down the situation," Muhammad said.

He further said: "When you have this kind of situation, people will naturally get agitated but people are getting calm now because they know the supply gap has now been bridged, and it is a question of distribution now. They are all patient and that was what happened in Lagos. The situation has virtually normalised in Lagos because the motorists cooperated.
"Still, there are some hitches here and there but improvement is what we are counting on and it is what we should be expecting.

"People always take advantage of situations and now we hear taxi drivers now take advantage of the situation and find it more profitable to join queues and round trip to sell to black market operators than doing their business. We will need to devise means of stopping people from diverting and round tripping."

On his part, Ezeala, who confirmed that the Port Harcourt Refinery was back on stream, as well as the activities of the taxi drivers, explained that the corporation had increased daily product truck-out to Abuja.
He said that Abuja and its environs got up to 204 trucks of petrol daily and should have no reason to still experience scarcity of petrol in its filling stations.


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