Nigeria's Dangote refinery will reach a goal of 550,000-bpd (barrels per day) this year, but it is increasing crude imports due to insufficient domestic supply, CEO Aliko Dangote reportedly said on Saturday.
The 650,000-bpd refinery received only five crude cargoes from state oil firm NNPC, instead of the expected 15. This led to buying Brazilian and US crude, with brokers adding a $4 markup per barrel.
"That is why we went ahead and bought some Brazilian crude, we also got US crude. Anytime we go to IOCs [international oil companies], they say go to brokers," Dangote was quoted by the media as saying during a tour of the facility in Lagos.
Previously, NNPC had agreed to supply 300,000-bpd but struggles with low production and crude-for-gasoline swaps, the firm's CEO told the media in June.
Moreover, Dangote refuted the monopoly claims made by the Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), Farouk Ahmed, by saying that the Dangote Group did not receive any special incentives during the construction of the refinery.
The Dangote Group head further refuted Ahmed's claims that his refinery's petroleum products were inferior to those that were imported. The entrepreneur called on the NMDPRA to examine its testing laboratory, citing test results of diesel samples taken from two separate filling stations and one from his refinery as proof for his assertions.
He acknowledged that the refinery was, in fact, producing the substandard diesel at the beginning, with a sulfur concentration of between 600 and 650 parts per million (ppm), given that it was the best available quality at the time. Dangote said that his diesel's quality has improved and that the sulfur concentration has dropped to 87 ppm, but by next Monday, it will have dropped to 50 ppm.
He also noted that by next month, the sulfur concentration would drop even further to 10 parts per million. He then maintained that his refinery is the only one now producing fuel of higher quality.
On Friday, Ahmed stated that the NNPC's imports of diesel and jet fuel were of higher quality than those produced at the refinery.
“I want to plead with the regulator to come, whether Sunday or Monday, and I can guarantee you that before they come here it will be even below 10ppm,” Dangote stated, adding that the diesel purchased from the two filling stations had sulfur contents of more than 1,800 ppm and 2,600 ppm, respectively, in comparison.
The CEO requested that Nigeria's House of Representatives conduct an inquiry into the quality of diesel in the country and the quality of laboratories that test imported products. Additionally, he expressed his willingness to allow independent testing of his refinery's products to verify their quality and reveal the issue with certain products sold by other industry players.
The Dangote refinery, which was launched in January 2024, with a cost of $20 billion, has the potential to become the largest facility in both Africa and Europe if it achieves its maximum production capability. Moreover, it could end $17 billion annual gasoline imports from Europe to Africa, the media reported.