The shutdown of the Port Harcourt Refinery has cost Nigeria an estimated ₦366.2 billion in five months, highlighting structural inefficiencies and governance issues in public refining operations.
Nigeria incurred losses amounting to ₦366.2 billion (about $249.7 million) during the five-month shutdown of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL)-revived Port Harcourt Refinery (PHR), the largest refinery in the country. The facility, at Eleme in Rivers State, had been brought back online in November 2024 with an estimated capacity of 60,000 barrels per day.
The refinery was shut on 24 May 2025 for planned maintenance and a sustainability assessment, barely six months after its restart. Calculations by Daily Trust show that loss due to Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) alone totaled about ₦196.56 billion, kerosene about ₦141.10 billion, and diesel around ₦285.48 billion over the 156-day period — together summing to the ₦366.21 billion figure.
NNPCL’s Group Chief Executive Officer, Bayo Ojulari, acknowledged that the refinery was generating losses of between ₦300 million and ₦500 million monthly before its suspension of operations. “When I resumed… one of the first priorities I focused on was the refineries … What I found is that we were losing between N300 million to N500 million monthly on the overall refinery. For Port Harcourt, we were sending in about 950,000 barrels as cargo, but less than 40 per cent was coming out.”
Refinery workers, speaking on condition of anonymity, claimed the plant was not making products as reported, alleging importation and re-labelling of refined fuels. “They were bringing in refined products, they were not refining here,” one staff member said. Meanwhile, the National Association of Plant Operators (NAPO) cited competition from private refineries and importers as systemic obstacles: “A lot of people are cashing out from the shutting down of the refinery, what is holding that refinery is monopoly.”