Petroleum economists and former Director of the Centre for Petroleum, Energy Economics and Law (CPEEL), University of Ibadan (UI), Prof Adeola Adenikinju, has urged the Federal Government to come out clean and tell Nigerians the true situation of the Port Harcourt Refinery.

The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) had said the refinery commenced crude oil processing earlier this week. However, some Nigerians are sceptical about the veracity of the information.

Secretary of Alesa community stakeholders, Timothy Mgbere, yesterday, alleged that the petroleum products loaded from the newly rehabilitated Port Harcourt Refinery were not freshly refined but products left in the storage tank of the facility in the last three years.

While speaking with The Guardian in Ibadan, the former CPEEL director said the government needed to disclose the full information about the refinery.The former Head of the Department of Economics at the premier university urged the government to take journalists to the refinery to confirm the claim.

The don said: ‘’We don’t know the latest about the Port Harcourt Refinery. There must be a way. So, the government should come out open and let us know what is happening. They cannot keep quiet. They must communicate with the people.

“They can take journalists there to see things for themselves so that people can see for themselves, not what they tell them, and we can be sure that the government is saying the truth.”

MGBERE also alleged that the refinery only loaded six trucks on Tuesday against the 200 trucks it said would be picked up from the refinery daily.

He made these revelations during his appearance as a guest on Arise TV, yesterday. Alesa, one of the 10 major communities in Eleme, Rivers State, is the host community of the Port Harcourt Refinery.

On Tuesday, the 60,000-capacity refinery reportedly resumed operations after years of inactivity, drawing initial praise from Nigerians and industry stakeholders.

The NNPCL said the complex of the old Port Harcourt refinery, which had been revamped and upgraded with modern equipment, was operating at 70 per cent of its installed capacity.

But speaking during the interview, the secretary described the ceremony as a “party”, stressing that the full units of the old complex were not functional. He said, “The Port Harcourt refinery, and by extension, the Port Harcourt depot, happens to be the mainstay of the Alesa economy; the economic activities emanating from the operations of these depots mean a lot to us as a people. But as it were, I don’t think it is a cause for celebration yet, because what we are having in the media space is different from what we have on the ground.

“I can tell you on authority, as a community person, that what happened on Tuesday was 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 running, but not the entire unit.”

While giving the government credit for starting something positive at the facility, he added, “It is not to say, according to the Head of Corporate Communication of the NNPCL, Femi Soneye, like it is in the media, that they are already producing 1.4 million barrels per day. That’s not the case. That’s not true. 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.” (The Guardian)