Dangote refinery builds eight extra tanks for imported crude

The Dangote Petroleum Refinery is constructing eight extra tanks in its bid to have sufficient storage for imported crude oil.

A report by Africa Report has it that the refinery is ramping up its storage capability by 6.29 million barrels, equal to 1 billion litres.

The report said that the $20bn refinery is planning to stockpile imported crude oil as native provides grew to become unreliable.

Officers of the refinery have been quoted as saying that low crude provide from the Nigerian Nationwide Petroleum Firm Restricted “is driving import dependence.”

The constructing of eight further tanks will see crude storage capability on the $20bn refinery soar by 41.67 per cent to three.4 billion litres.

“Importing crude from different international locations as an alternative of shopping for domestically signifies that our crude stockpiles should be larger,” the Vice President accountable for oil and gasoline enterprise at Dangote Industries, Devakumar Edwin, was quoted as having stated.

“So we have now began constructing eight further crude tanks to carry a billion litres, over and above our unique storage capability. 4 of them are nearing completion,” Edwin added.

The refinery at the moment has 20 crude storage tanks with a capability of 120 million litres every, totalling 2.4 billion litres.

Its refined product tanks have a complete capability of two.34 billion litres.

Dangote started producing diesel and aviation gasoline in January 2024, and petrol in September, with merchandise provided to the home market and exported to a number of international locations.

Edwin described the availability of crude oil from the NNPC to the Dangote refinery as “nonetheless very low”.

Nigeria, which is Africa’s largest oil producer, was importing its fuels till final yr when the Dangote refinery got here on stream.

At this time, the NNPC’s Warri and Port Harcourt refineries have resumed operations, indicating that the corporate must provide crude to the 2 services apart from the share dedicated to servicing its loans.

Nigeria has continued to cope with underinvestment and manufacturing outages triggered largely by theft and pipeline vandalism, which have seen it lose its high spot in Africa a number of instances in recent times.

Nevertheless, the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Fee stated final month that crude is 1.45 million barrels per day as of November, 99 per cent of its 1.5mbpd OPEC quota.

The PidomNigeria stories that Dangote’s determination to increase storage services for imported crude might be a sign that the naira-for-crude deal ordered by President Bola Tinubu could be fading out regularly.

Earlier than President Bola Tinubu ordered the sale of crude to Dangote refinery in August, the ability had battled months of crude scarcity.

The President of the Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, accused worldwide oil firms of plans to sabotage the refinery by refusing to produce crude oil.

On July 29, the Federal Govt Council authorised a proposal by Tinubu for the NNPC to promote crude oil to native refineries in naira.

It authorised that the 450,000 barrels meant for home consumption be provided in naira to the refineries, utilizing the Dangote refinery as a pilot.

The implementation of the initiative began on 1 October, with the NNPC anticipated to begin the availability of about 385,000 bpd of crude oil to the Dangote refinery to be paid for in naira.

Aliko Dangote, president of Dangote Industries, stated in December that the naira-for-crude deal has led to a discount in costs of petroleum merchandise within the nation

In the mean time, the Dangote refinery is ramping up manufacturing as its petrol gathers momentum amongst Nigerian car homeowners.