The Africa Report said Monday that the Dangote Petroleum Refinery awaits up to 12 million barrels of crude oil from the United States.
As local supply issues hampered the new $20 billion refinery’s efforts to attain full refining capacity, the facility turned to importing oil.
Remember that the refinery is scheduled to attain its capacity of 650,000 barrels per day in June of this year.
However, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL)’s limited local crude supply is now impeding this ambition to increase daily production.
The Africa Report was informed by an insider that around 12 million barrels of crude oil had left the United States and were expected to reach Nigeria by February.
According to reports, when the $20 billion plant located in Lekki runs out of crude oil from the NNPCL, the Dangote Petroleum Refinery is importing more of it.
The facility has increased production to roughly 500,000 barrels per day, according to plant officials, with the goal of reaching 650,000 barrels per day by June of this year.
Although sources said that the naira-for-oil contract is still in effect as instructed by President Bola Tinubu last year, the facility will need to buy more crude to reach its goal.
It is said that the NNPCL is having trouble supplying the Dangote refinery with 350,000 barrels per day of oil, out of 450,000 barrels per day intended for local use in Nigeria.
According to officials, it is necessary to go outside of Nigeria for the feedstock given its existing production capability of 500,000 barrels per day.
The state-owned oil firm, NNPCL, is reportedly unable to provide all of the feedstock required by the refinery daily.
“We will ramp up to 650,000 bpd by midyear from our current level of 500,000 bpd. Do you understand what it means? So, sourcing crude oil wherever it is available is standard procedure,” a plant official stated.
Remember that President Tinubu gave the NNPCL a naira directive in July to sell crude oil to nearby refineries.
The committee overseeing the naira-for-crude agreement announced in October that it would only sell to refineries that produced petrol, and it started selling crude to the Dangote facility in naira.
More refineries will be taken into consideration for the naira-for-crude agreement, though, as the Port Harcourt and Warri refineries come online.
The Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission Chief Executive, Gbenga Komolafe, signed the crude oil production forecast of producing oil companies and the refining requirements of operational refineries in Nigeria.
The Dangote refinery would need 550,000 barrels of a blend of Nigerian crude oil per day, 17.05 million barrels per month, and 99.55 million barrels between January and June 2025.
Eight new tanks to hold imported oil are already being constructed at the Dangote refinery. As local sources of crude oil grow unstable, the facility intends to accumulate imported crude oil.
Refinery officials were reported as stating that import dependence is being driven by the NNPCL’s poor crude supplies.
The construction of eight more tanks will increase the refinery’s ability to store oil by 41.67%, to 3.4 billion litres.
