The Managing Director of Port Harcourt refinery, Ibrahim Onoja, has stated that the refinery has continued full operation after a brief "scaling down".

The refinery explained why there was inactivity for a short while.

Recall that journalists observed no signs of activity upon visiting the Port Harcourt Refinery Area 5 just a few days after it began operation.

Meanwhile, following a Sunday night tour of the refinery, Onoja told reporters that the facility has resumed product delivery, including diesel, kerosene, and Premium Motor Spirit.

"The refining plant has undergone extensive upgrades to enhance efficiency and reliability which had also impacted on production capacity.

"We replaced most of the equipment including pumps installation and cables. The plant is running and we are trucking out our products,” he said.

Nigeria Pipeline Storage Company (NPSC) Ltd. Director of Operations Moyi Maidunama admitted that production had temporarily decreased, The Nation reported.

He added that the reduction was required to assist address some technical issues so that the facility could boost its supply capacity.

"We are managing the process with the number of trucks available today, using three loading arms for evacuation, this will be resolved soon.

"Our operations were not totally halted but reduced due to some of the improvements that we needed to make in terms of getting more loading arms operational.

"We have been evacuating refined petroleum products from the refinery since yesterday and its obviously going to be a continuous process,” he said.

He claims that because of its great efficiency, the deport, which has eleven operational loading bays, currently only uses three.

He said that each of the bay evacuates as much as three trucks in 15 minutes. He however, expressed worries over slow turn out of tanker drivers.

"We have surplus product. Let us say we have up to 100 trucks today, we will evacuate them in a five hours, Its no longer our problem, its the tanker drivers,” he said.