June 08, (THEWILL) – The old Port Harcourt Refinery has been rested – at least, for now. The 60,000 barrels-per-day refining facility is shut for maintenance. Until the exercise is completed, perhaps in another six months, the 60-year-old plant will be out of news. It will be business in silence.
Late in May 2025, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) announced that it had shut down the old Port Harcourt Refinery for another round of maintenance beginning May 24.
This was six months after the NNPCL had in November 2024 announced the restart of the same plant that had been moribund since 2019. The development stirred scepticism among many Nigerians who argued that the restart was merely window dressing rather than actual progress. But NNPCL maintained that the same refinery had resumed production.
It was obvious that the Port Harcourt Refinery had become a base for wishful thinking and a window for political aggrandisement among those in authority.
In a dramatic change of events, the Federal Government had earlier in December 2023 confirmed the “commencement of operations” at the Port Harcourt Refinery.
It announced that the facility commenced operations on December 20, 2023, as the first phase of work at the plant had been completed, adding that refined petroleum products would start flowing from the refinery after the Christmas break. This did not happen.
Later, the NNPCL said in November 2024 that the Port Harcourt refinery had commenced production after a long period of rehabilitation that started in 2019. The national oil company said the refinery began truck loading of petroleum products on Tuesday 26 November.
Olufemi Soneye, the chief corporate communications officer of the company disclosed in a post on his X handle on Tuesday November 26, 2024 that “PortHarcourt Refinery begins production; truck loading starts today, Tuesday.”
The Port Harcourt Refineries comprise two units, with the old plant having a refining capacity of 60,000 barrels per day (bpd) and the new plant 150,000 bpd, both summing up to 210,000 bpd.
In a press statement release signed by Soneye and released on December 21, with the title, ‘NNPC Ltd Fulfills Promise, Delivers Port Harcourt Refinery … Achieves Mechanical Completion, Flare Start-up of Refinery’s Area 5 Plant’, the national oil company claimed it had achieved its target of returning the facility to production that month.
“In our quest to ensure that this refinery is re-streamed to continue to deliver value to Nigerians, we made a promise that we will reach a mechanical completion of phase one of the rehabilitation project by the end of December and get the other plants running in 2024. Today, we have kept those commitments,” it quoted then NNPCL Chief Executive Officer, Mele Kyari as announcing during a facility tour of the plant.
However, industry experts and inner members of the Refiners had countered the claim by NNPCL, maintaining that the refinery was far from the state of resuming actual production.
Among them was Engr Alex Ogedegbe, a former Managing Director of Port Harcourt and Kaduna Refineries at different times who explained that the so-called fulfilled promise was a hoax.
According to him, the latest terminology, ‘Mechanical Completion and Flare start-up’ were never part of the original definition of NNPCL, as the target to be achieved by December 31, 2023.
“Moreover, this purported achievement advertised, has no practical effect to the public expectation, which was that the older, 60,000b/d refinery would start production for local consumption!
“Mechanical completion can only be achieved, if and when all the progress statistics quoted in the NNPCL press release had reached 100%. Only thereafter can testing and commissioning of the refinery begin.
“From the analysis of the information published so far it does not appear that the refinery can start any production in the foreseeable future,” Ogedegbe disclosed in a statement, adding, “It is also noteworthy that the main contractor, TECHNIMONT did not promise any mechanical completion or production start-up dates.”
During the nationwide strike by Organized Labour in July 2023 to protest the excruciating hardship resulting from the removal of fuel subsidy, President Tinubu gave his commitment that the Port Harcourt Refinery would resume production in December, 2023.
At a meeting with the leaders of Organised Labour in the State House on August 2, 2023, President Nolan Tinubu assured Nigerians that the Port Harcourt Refinery will start production by December 2023 after the completion of the ongoing rehabilitation contract on the facility between the Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) and Italian firm, Maire Tecnimont SpA.
Before his death in July 2024, the Chairman, Senate Committee on Petroleum (Downstream), Ifeanyi Ubah, had said that two refineries- Port Harcourt and Warri would be fully operational by the end of 2024.
Ubah said plans had already been put in place to achieve the target, stressing that the Kaduna Refinery would also be operational before the end of the following year.
“My mandate is to ensure that the refineries in Nigeria are up and functional. By my involvement, before the end of this year, two refineries will be up and running.
“Also, before the end of next year, the Kaduna refinery will come on stream.
“I can assure Nigerians that I will tirelessly pursue and ensure that these refineries are up and running before the end of the year. We have set up a technical team to visit the refineries every two weeks in order to meet the set target,” he said.
The latest shutdown of the Port Harcourt Refinery for another “maintenance” six months after the NNPCL announced the commencement of production at the facility in November 2024, validates the doubts by sceptics that the over $1.5 billion spent in the refurbishment of the plant would have been a waste.
THEWILL recalls that the Senate on October 24, 2023 constituted an ad-hoc committee to investigate all contracts estimated at over N11.35 trillion awarded for the rehabilitation of the four moribund refineries in the country.
This followed a motion brought by Senator Sunday Karimu on the unending repairs of the nation’s refineries despite the huge resources invested in fixing them.
He added, “We are concerned that the Federal Government of Nigeria has carried out rehabilitation projects in Port Harcourt Refinery Company (PHRC) over a period of seven (7) years from 2013-2019 at an estimated cost of N12,161,237,811.61.
“In addition, on the 18th March 2021, a rehabilitation contract was executed between NNPC/PHRC and Tenenimont SPA at a Lump Sum of $1,397,000,000.00, about N75 billion naira amidst global public criticism, no result has been achieved.”
This abrupt shutdown of the Port Harcourt Refinery in May 2025, has raised concerns, especially as it followed reports that the refinery was only blending naphtha into diesel, while questions hung over its actual petrol production.
It has laid to rest the controversy as to what the facility was really doing – production or blending. It has also ended the long years of empty promises and vague utterances by the authorities who saw the Port Harcourt Refinery as the easiest way to reach out to the citizenry that the government is working.
Meanwhile, the companies will continue to pay huge salaries to the idle workers who have been hibernating in the government-owned refineries that have kept churning crude, unrefined tales of lies and deceit as the nation’s refineries are on their way to becoming scraps good for the archives.
Sam Diala is a Bloomberg Certified Financial Journalist with over a decade of experience in reporting Business and Economy. He is Business Editor at THEWILL Newspaper, and believes that work, not wishes, creates wealth.
