The nation’s pioneer crude oil refining plant, Warri Refinery and Petrochemical Company, WRPC, has once again been shut down.
Findings by National Mirror yesterday showed that the plant was shut down last week due to a major fault at one of its strategic units.
The latest development raised fresh fears of imminent nationwide shortage of petroleum products, especially in the areas being serviced by the plant in the southern and northern parts of the country.
Investigation by National Mirror yesterday showed that the management of the Pipelines and Products Marketing Company, PPMC, a subsidiary of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, responsible for the distribution and marketing of petroleum products, had alerted the leadership of the major and independent oil dealers about the latest development.
Consequently, the PPMC had embarked on rationing of the stock of petroleum products.
National Mirror further learnt that the PPMC had scaled down allocation of petroleum products to oil dealers attached to the Warri Refinery Depot of NNPC.
Specifically, a source in WRPC revealed yesterday that the plant was shut down on Wednesday, last week, after the management of the plant secured the nod of the NNPC. It was gathered that the Managing Director of the plant, Mr. Paul Obelley, had sent a distress memo on the deplorable state of the plant to the Group Managing Director of NNPC, Mr. Andrew Yakubu, who was convinced about the imperativeness of the action.
One of our sources said, “WRPC was shut down on Wednesday as the management was able to convince the corporate headquarters of NNPC that the plant was in a bad shape because of the technical problems at some of its strategic units. We cannot be specific about the problematic units but the plant had to be brought down due to exigency.
“Its operations have been on and off in the operation and the management was convinced that it would on a safer side to once again shut down the facility to carry out repair of some major production units. The information was being shielded from the public so that it would not engender panic buying of petroleum products but honestly WRPC was shut down about four days ago.
Source: National Mirror