The first crude feed for Dangote's 650,000 barrels-per-day refinery in Nigeria arrived at the plant Thursday evening, signaling the end of years of delays in fuel production at the new $19 billion facility, the media reported.
The OTIS ship reportedly loaded 950,000 barrels of crude oil from Agbami oilfield on Wednesday and unloaded it at the refinery terminal a day later.
One of Nigeria's biggest deepwater operations, Agbami is operated by Chevron and pumps roughly 100,000 barrels per day in the central oil-rich Niger Delta. It produces light sweet crude, known in the market for yielding a significant amount of naphtha and kerosene.
The Suezmax tanker, chartered by state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC), is the first of Dangote’s initial crude supplies as the massive new plant begins to ramp up operations.
Moreover, the refinery's 20% owner, NNPC, has reportedly committed to providing 6 million barrels of crude oil to the facility as feedstock in December.
Later this month, NNPCL plans to charter several more tankers to deliver further supplies of petroleum from offshore fields to the refinery, the media reported.
Aliko Dangote, the CEO of the Dangote Group, told the local media that the first priority is to supply gasoline to Nigeria before exporting it to other countries, including the West African region.
"We don’t want to start our refinery with foreign goods, we want to start with the Nigerian crude," he said. "We’re more than ready, and you will see our gasoline products soon."
One of Nigeria's biggest deepwater operations, Agbami is operated by Chevron and pumps roughly 100,000 barrels per day in the central oil-rich Niger Delta. It produces light sweet crude, known in the market for yielding a significant amount of naphtha and kerosene.
The refinery’s startup has been continuously postponed since the project was announced in 2013 even though most of the key units were installed in 2019. Besides, due to a shortage of domestic crude feedstock, the privately owned facility has not produced any oil products yet, although it was technically completed in May.
The refinery will produce 327,000 barrels of gasoline per day when it is fully operational, as well as 244,000 barrels of gasoil/diesel, 56,000 barrels of jet fuel/kerosene, and 290,000 metric tons of propane/LPG annually, according to the reports.
Nigeria anticipates that the Dangote refinery will assist in reducing its reliance on imported gasoline. The country's present refineries are in bad condition and are all currently closed for maintenance, forcing the country to import between one and two million metric tons of gasoline each month to meet domestic demand.