Amid current crude oil supply challenges in Nigeria, the Dangote Refinery has announced its plans to operate at full capacity in 30 days.
The Head of the Dangote Oil Refinery, Edwin Devakumar, who announced this on Monday, said the refinery is currently operating at 85% capacity and “we can go 100 percent in 30 days.”
Recall that the 650,000-barrel-per-day refinery built by the Nigerian billionaire, Aliko Dangote in Lagos began processing crude into products, including diesel, naphtha and jet fuel, in January last year and started processing petrol in September the same year.
It aims to compete with European refiners when operating at full capacity but had been struggling to secure sufficient crude locally.
Just recently, the refinery announced that it has resorted to crude importation from the United States as local supply hindered its push to reach full refining capacity.
It alleged that low local crude supply from the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC) was a challenge to this plan to ramp up daily production.
Officials at the plant said the facility has ramped up production to about 500,000 barrels per day, with the target of hitting the 650,000bpd mark.
The NNPC is reportedly struggling to supply 350,000bpd to the Dangote refinery from the 450,000bpd crude meant for Nigeria’s local consumption.
With its current production capacity of 500,000bpd, officials said there is a need to look beyond the shores of Nigeria for the feedstock.
It was said that the feedstock needed by the refinery daily cannot be solely supplied by the state-owned oil company, NNPC.
Recall that in July last year, President Tinubu ordered the NNPC to sell crude oil to local refineries in naira.
According to the crude oil production forecast of producing oil companies and the refining requirement of functional refineries in Nigeria signed by the Chief Executive of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission, Gbenga Komolafe, the Dangote refinery would require 550,000 barrels of a blend of Nigerian crude oil daily, 17.05 million barrels monthly, and 99.55 million barrels between January and June 2025.
The Dangote refinery is already building eight more tanks to store imported crude. The facility is planning to stockpile imported crude oil as local supplies become unreliable.
Officials of the refinery were quoted as saying that low crude supply from the NNPC “is driving import dependence.”
The building of eight additional tanks will see crude storage capacity at the refinery jump by 41.67 per cent to 3.4 billion litres.
About five days ago, the refinery achieved a significant milestone by successfully exporting two jet fuel cargoes to Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil producer and a leading integrated oil and gas company globally.
President of Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, revealed this when a team from the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG), visited both Dangote Fertiliser Limited and the Dangote Petroleum Refinery & Petrochemicals in Ibeju Lekki, Lagos.
“We are reaching the ambitious goals we set for ourselves, and I’m pleased to announce that we’ve just sold two cargoes of jet fuel to Saudi Aramco,” he said.
