Alhaji Aliko Dangote.
By Ishola Moses.
The President/Chief Executive of Dangote Group, Alhaji Aloko Dangote,has reassured Nigerian consumers that the Dangote Petroleum Refinery is adequately equipped to produce and supply fuel –petrol, diesel and aviation fuel – needs of the entire West African country, and there will be no need to import Premium Motor Spirit, also known as petrol, from June 2024
The perennial fuel scarcity destabilising several socio-economic activities in Nigeria over the years may soon become a thing of the past by June 2024.
This is because Alhaji Aliko Dangote, President/Chief Executive of Dangote Group, has reassured Nigerian consumers that with the plan the Dangote Petroleum Refinery has in place, the West African country will not need import Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), also known as petrol from next month.
ConsumerConnect reports Dangote, Africa’s richest man, who spoke as a panelist at the Africa CEO Forum Annual Summit Friday, May 17, 2024, in Kigali, Rwanda, noted the refinery has the refining capacity to meet the diesel and petrol needs of the whole of West Africa, and aviation fuel demand of the African continent.
The privately-owned petrol refinery, which recently commenced the production and supply of diesel and aviation fuel, otherwise known as Jet1, to Nigerian consumers 650,000 barrels per day (bpd), 1 million tonnes of polypropylene, and 590,000 carbon black, that is the raw materials ink, dyes and others.
Dangote stated: “Right now, Nigeria has no cause to import anything apart from gasoline, and by sometime in June, within the next four or five weeks, Nigeria shouldn’t import anything like gasoline; not one drop of a litre.”
He also expressed how Dangote Petroleum Refinery has remained focused in ensuring that the entire African continent would depend less on fuel importation in the nearest future.
The President of Dangote Group said: “We have enough gasoline to give to at least the entire West Africa, diesel to give to West Africa and Central Africa. We have enough aviation fuel to give to the entire continent and also export some to Brazil and Mexico.
“Today, our polypropylene and our polyethene will meet the entire demand of Africa and we are doing base oil, which is like engine oil, we are doing linear benzyl, which is raw material to produce detergent. We have 1.4 billion people in the population, nobody is producing that in Africa.”
He further noted: “So, all the raw materials for our detergents are imported. We are producing the raw materials to make Africa self-sufficient.
“As I said, give us three or a maximum of four years and Africa will not, I repeat, not import any more fertilizer from anywhere.
“We will make Africa self-sufficient in potash, phosphate, and urea, we are at three million tonnes and in the next twenty months, we will be at six million tonnes of urea which is the entire capacity of Egypt. We are getting there.”
Dangote, Friday at the forum in Kigali, equally recalled how his dream for further investment in Africa as well as ending fuel importation in Africa has culminated in what is now one of the biggest refineries in the world.
He explained: “For some of us, despite the boom of the Capital market of the United States (US), you know, Google, Microsoft and the rest, we didn’t participate. We took all our money and invested in Africa.
“We had this dream, just about five years ago, and we said we wanted to move from five billion (Dollars) revenue to thirty billion revenue; and we made it happen. It is possible and now we have made it happen and now we have finished our refinery.
“Our refinery is quite big; it is something that we believe that Africa needs. If you look at the whole continent, there are only two countries that don’t import petroleum products, which is a tragedy. They are only Algeria and Libya.
“The rest are all importers. So, we need to change and make sure that we don’t just go and produce raw materials, we should also produce finished products and create jobs.
On refining capacity of Dangote Petroleum Refinery
The African richest man also disclosed to his audience “one of the things we also need to know as Africans is that we produce raw materials and export them when you export raw materials and somebody now keeps importing things into your continent and dumping goods. what you are importing is poverty and exporting jobs. So, we have to change that narrative.”
Dangote said: “We just commissioned in February (2024), and now we are producing jet fuel, we are producing diesel and by next month, we will be producing gasoline. What that would do is that we would be taking most of the African crude that is being produced and also be able to supply not only Nigeria, because our capacity is too big for Nigeria, but it would also supply West Africa, Central Africa and also South Africa.
“We have 650,000 barrels per day, 1 million tonnes of polypropylene, we have 590,000 carbon black, that is the raw materials ink, dyes and co.
“We are expanding more. This is the first phase and we are going out to the next phase which will start early next year.”
Source:ConsumerConnect.
