The Dangote oil refinery is planning to end crude importation by December 2025, a report by Bloomberg has said.
The refinery is willing to rely fully on Nigerian crude by the end of the year, a move that would replace hundreds of thousands of barrels a day of imported oil.
Bloomberg reports that the plant received about half of its crude in June from local producers who would be able to sell more to the facility as their foreign supply obligations end soon.
Vice President at Dangote Industries, who oversees the 650,000 barrel-a-day plant in Lagos, Devakumar Edwin, said the contracts with foreign crude suppliers would expire and the refinery would source its feedstock locally.
“We expect some of the long-term contracts will expire. Personally, and as a company, we expect that before the end of the year, we can transition 100 per cent to local crude,” Edwin was quoted.
The PUNCH recalls that the founder of the refinery, Aliko Dangote, said recently that the facility relied heavily on the United States for crude supply despite the naira-for-crude deal.
The Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission stated in its 2024 report that oil producers protested against the directive to supply crude to Dangote and other local refineries in accordance with the Domestic Crude Supply Obligations.
It was learnt that supply contracts with foreign companies, crude theft and attacks on pipelines in the Niger Delta have impacted production reducing the availability of oil for the local market..
According to Edwin, the company has imported crude from Brazil, Angola, Ghana and Equatorial Guinea. However, he said “improved relations between the refinery, local oil traders and the government will result in a steady supply of Nigerian crude.”
The facility is expecting a significant increase in local oil over the coming months.
Data compiled by Bloomberg showed that the refinery sourced 53 per cent of its crude supply from domestic producers and 47 per cent from the United States in June.
The plant is currently processing 550,000 barrels of crude per day, according to Edwin.
Dangote was scheduled to take five cargoes from the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited in July, the same amount that it’s due to take up in August, according to a list of cargo allocations seen by Bloomberg News. Each shipment holds almost a million barrels of crude.
Aliko Dangote built his $20bn refinery to stop sending barrels of crude produced in Nigeria to Europe only to be refined and shipped back as costly imports.
The gradual ramp-up of the refinery is already making Nigeria a net exporter of petroleum products, despite challenges with crude before reaching its 650,000 bpd nameplate capacity. The effort required large quantities of overseas crude after domestic traders failed to meet demand.
Credit: punchng.com
