President of the Dangote Refinery, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, says the refinery is now set to roll out its petrol from August 2024, having resolved its crude oil supply issues through the help of the Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) and the federal government.
Dangote told senior journalists in Lagos on Sunday that the crude supply challenge, which affected the supply of petrol from the refinery, was resolved last week after the federal government intervened.
The journalists were on a guided tour of the refinery, which is located at the Lekki Free Trade Zone in Lagos.
Recently the Dangote Industries Limited (DIL) raised an alarm over attempts by international oil companies (IOCs) to frustrate efforts at purchasing crude for the refinery.
“While the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) are trying their best to allocate the crude for us, the IOCs are deliberately and willfully frustrating our efforts to buy the local crude,” the Vice President, Oil and Gas at DIL, Devakumar Edwin, told energy editors in June.
“It seems that the objective is to ensure that our Petroleum Refinery fails. It is either they are deliberately asking for ridiculous/humongous premium or, they simply state that crude is not available.
“At some point, we paid $6 over and above the market price. This has forced us to reduce our output as well as import crude from countries as far as the US, increasing our cost of production.”
Fertiliser production
Beyond resolving the crude supply issues and announcing plans to roll out petrol in August, Alhaji Dangote also told journalists that the refinery’s fertiliser unit would resume production in two weeks.
This would give farmers more access to fertiliser for their farm products.
Dangote told over 70 journalists who were part of the refinery tour that there was a massive request for fertiliser from Nigerians and the rest of Africa, so his group had no choice but to respond positively.
