Dangote Petroleum refinery will be listed on the Nigerian Exchange before the end of March 2025.
This is according to the President and Chief Executive Officer of Dangote Industries Limited, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, who disclosed that the refinery was set to roll out its petrol in August 2024.
According to Alhaji Dangote who took senior journalists on a tour of the refinery and Dangote Fertilizer plants in Ibeji-Lekki, Lagos state recently, the refinery has resolved its crude oil supply issues that hindered it from supplying Premium Motor Spirit, PMS, popularly known as petrol despite announcing a start time twice with the most recent one being in July.
The CEO also acknowledged the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited and the Federal Government for the roles they both played in ensuring that the lingering issues were duly resolved last week, adding that the refinery steady state production phase which commenced in March 2024, is expected to ramp up production to reach 500,000 barrels per day with 15 crude cargoes a month by next August, 550,000bpd by the end of the year and 650,000bpd by the first quarter of 2025.
He, however noted that, in opposition to prior publications that claimed that the federal government owns 20 per cent stake in the refinery, it has only 7.2 per cent stake with the company.
He said, “We plan to list the refinery and petrochemical before the end of the first quarter of next year.
“The issue of crude has been settled last week. But we hope that the IOCs will respect it,” he added.
Continuing, Dangote said, “The Federal Government have only 7.2 per cent because it failed to pay for the balance for the 20 per cent stake.”
In a related development, the Vice President of Oil and Gas at Dangote Industries Limited, Devakumar Edwin, had recently accused international oil companies in the country of plotting to frustrate the survival of the new Dangote refinery stating that, the IOCs were deliberately and wilfully frustrating the refinery’s efforts to buy local crude by hiking the cost above the market price.
Edwin said that the IOCs were hiking the price by $6 which makes the cost exorbitant, compelling the new Dangote refinery to import crude from countries as far as the US, with its attendant high costs.
Edwin stated, “The IOCs are deliberately and wilfully frustrating our efforts to buy the local crude.
“It seems that the IOCs’ objective is to ensure that our petroleum refinery fails. It is either they are deliberately asking for a ridiculous and 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.
“It appears that the objective of the IOCs is to ensure that Nigeria remains a country, which exports crude oil and imports refined petroleum products. They are keen on exporting the raw materials to their home countries, creating employment and wealth for their countries, adding to their Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and dumping the expensive refined products into Nigeria, thus making us dependent on imported products.”
The Dangote refinery commenced full operations with the supply of diesel and aviation fuel into the Nigerian market in 2024, starting with the refining of intermediate products such as polypropylene, naphtha, RCO, gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.
