The Port Harcourt Refining Company, PHRC, says tanker drivers are to blame for the slow pace of truck-loading at the Refinery after it commenced operations on Tuesday.
Terminal Manager of the Refinery, Molokwu Chike Jewel said this in a chat with journalists at the company on Sunday
According to him, drivers have been reluctant to come to the company to load products without any concrete reason, as they have been pleading with them to do so.
Mr. Chike stated that a few of them turned up for loading today, and that operations have been smooth without glitches.
“Products are available. We have been begging them(Tanker drivers) to come in since yesterday, but they didn’t turn up. It’s just this morning after pleading with them they came.
“It is not our problem, it is the Tanker drivers problem. We have been begging them since yesterday to come around and take,” he said.
He also said that the Refinery has the capacity to load about 100 trucks in less than 5 hours, adding that products are available with 11 of its loading arms functional.
“Our loading arms are functional but because of the capacity we are using, we have a huge capacity to deliver. We are using three at the moment because it is efficient. The three; each one has the capacity of loading three trucks in 15mins. We had already loaded 10 trucks in the next one hour, we will evacuate minimum of 15 trucks,” Jewel added.
On his part, a tanker driver, James Onyema who spoke to our correspondent said operations have been smooth, and that they are happy the refinery is functional.
As you may know, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited had on Tuesday announced that the Refinery has commenced operations with the capacity of 60, 000 barrels per day.
