{"id":66934,"date":"2025-05-30T11:39:20","date_gmt":"2025-05-30T11:39:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=66934"},"modified":"2025-05-30T11:39:20","modified_gmt":"2025-05-30T11:39:20","slug":"liar-no-ongoing-maintenance-at-port-harcourt-refinery-marketers-slam-nnpc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/05\/30\/liar-no-ongoing-maintenance-at-port-harcourt-refinery-marketers-slam-nnpc\/","title":{"rendered":"Liar, No Ongoing Maintenance at Port Harcourt Refinery, Marketers Slam NNPC"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Anifowoshe Oladipupo<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Fuel marketers in Rivers State have dismissed claims by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), that the Port Harcourt refinery is undergoing maintenance, insisting that the facility was shut down due to a lack of crude oil supply.<\/p>\n<p>At a press conference on Thursday, the Petroleum Products Retail Outlet Owners Association of Nigeria (PETROAN) refuted NNPCL\u2019s statement that the refinery was operational until May 24, citing insider information to argue that operations ceased earlier due to crude shortages.<\/p>\n<p>Joseph Obele, Administrative Secretary and Spokesman of PETROAN, stated that the shutdown was unrelated to any scheduled maintenance, but rather resulted from the refinery\u2019s inability to access crude oil.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs members of the Host Community Bulk Petroleum Retailers Association, we have credible information that the refinery has not received crude oil for several days.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The shutdown was not for maintenance purposes\u2014it was due to a crude shortage,\u201d Obele said.<\/p>\n<p>He further disclosed that an internal memo from the Port Harcourt Refining Company (PHRC), revealed that the crude cracking process was yielding only diesel (AGO), and not petrol (PMS), leading to the suspension of operations.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe memo clearly stated that without PMS output, the refining process held little value. Hence, the facility was shut down. This is not maintenance; it&#8217;s a supply issue,\u201d Obele explained.<\/p>\n<p>He raised concerns over the whereabouts of the crude oil meant for domestic refining, suggesting it may be diverted to the international market in violation of federal directives.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are asking a critical question: if the refinery is being denied crude, where is that volume going? It can only be ending up on the international market.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This contradicts President Tinubu\u2019s policy against exporting crude intended for local consumption,\u201d he warned.<\/p>\n<p>Obele called on the Federal Government to investigate the situation and ensure that local refineries receive adequate crude supply to boost domestic fuel production and reduce reliance on imports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Anifowoshe Oladipupo Fuel marketers in Rivers State have dismissed claims by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), that the Port Harcourt refinery is undergoing maintenance, insisting that the facility was shut down due to a lack of crude oil supply. At a press conference on Thursday, the Petroleum Products Retail Outlet Owners Association [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":66935,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66934"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66936,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66934\/revisions\/66936"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}