Dangote Refinery Set To Roll Out Petrol In August

Dangote Refinery says it has resolved the crude oil supply issues with the help of the Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) and the federal government, and the refinery is now set to roll out its petrol in August 2024.

The company said in a report during the media tour of the refinery in Lagos on Sunday that the federal government’s intervention last week resolved the crude supply issue, which had affected the refinery’s ability to supply gasoline.

The report read: “Successful completion of trial run in January 2024. Refined and intermediate products include polypropylene, naphtha, RCO, gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel.

“Steady state production phase commenced in March 2024. Ramping up production to reach 500 kbpd (15 crude cargoes a month) by next August, 550 kbpd by the end of the year, and 650 kbpd by Q1 2025.

“Gasoline production to commence in July with sales from August.”

Recently, 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) is trying its 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.”

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 greater access to fertilizer for their farm products.

Dangote told over 70 journalists who were on the refinery tour that there was a massive demand for fertilizer from Nigerians and the rest of Africa, so his group had no choice but to respond positively.

Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals, a subsidiary of Dangote Industries Limited, is the world’s largest single-train petroleum refinery.

The Petrochemical Plant is designed to produce 77 different high-performance grades of polypropylene. Petrochemicals are the source of raw materials for many manufacturing and assembly plants.

About 60,000 skilled Nigerians were used in construction, given the opportunity to get trained in various aspects of construction testing and commissioning.