The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC Ltd) has ruled out the sale of the Port Harcourt Refining Company barely few days after admitting the possibility of selling the assets.

The Group Chief Executive Officer of NNPC Ltd, Bashir Bayo Ojulari, made this known during a company-wide town hall meeting on Tuesday at the NNPC Towers in Abuja.

He clarified that the decision is not a change of stance but is based on detailed technical and financial reviews of the Port Harcourt, Kaduna, and Warri refineries.

Ojulari explained that the earlier move to restart operations at the Port Harcourt refinery before completing its full rehabilitation was “ill-informed and sub-commercial.”

He said progress is ongoing across all three refineries but stressed that the current outlook requires more advanced technical partnerships to fully rehabilitate and upgrade the Port Harcourt facility.

According to him, selling the refinery would lead to further value erosion and is not being considered.

The announcement follows public speculation after Ojulari’s remarks at the 2025 OPEC Seminar in Vienna, where he said “all options are on the table” during a Bloomberg interview. His statement had sparked concerns about possible asset sales.

Ojulari acknowledged past challenges and outlined a roadmap for completing the refinery projects. He reaffirmed NNPC’s role as a strategic custodian of national energy infrastructure and said the company would continue to operate as a commercially driven and professionally managed energy firm committed to transparency and performance.