Port Harcourt and Warri refineries
Figures below refer to 30 June 2026 unless stated otherwise.
This is unfavourable and it is true. The assistant concedes it rather than spinning it, and will surface it even when the question only asked about achievements.
The claim
The state refineries are one of the administration's least defensible files. Do not build advocacy content on them.
Figures
The Port Harcourt 60,000 bpd unit and the Warri 78,000 bpd refinery restarted in late 2024 but shut down again by May 2025 and remain non-operational. Roughly $2.4bn was deployed on turnaround maintenance across both, against an original 2021 plan of $1.5bn for Port Harcourt, $897.6m for Warri and $740.7m for Kaduna. Prior contractors Tecnimont SpA and Daewoo were associated with delays, cost overruns and weak operational outcomes. A fresh deal was signed with Sanjiang Chemical Co. Ltd and Xingcheng (Fuzhou) Industrial Park Operation and Management Co. Ltd under a Technical Equity Partnership model.
The counter-argument
There is no defence. The correct answer to a question about the state refineries is that this is a failure, that the money spent has not produced working refineries, and that the domestic refining gains came from Dangote instead.