Chairman of Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, says Nigeria will have no need to import petroleum products as from next month, with the coming into effect of the Dangote Refinery’s plans.
This is because the refinery has capacity to meet West Africa’s petrol and diesel demands as well as Africa’s aviation fuel requirements.
“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 any gasoline; not one drop,” he said at the African CEO Forum Annual Summit in Kigali, Rwanda.
He added: “We have enough gasoline to supply at least the entire West Africa, diesel for West and Central Africa, and enough aviation fuel for the entire continent and to export to Brazil and Mexico.”
Besides, he said the refinery is also equipped to produce enough polypropylene and polythene for Africa.
Also to be produced by the refinery are base oil and linear alkyl benzene; a raw material used for detergent.
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He said: “With a population of 1.4 billion, Africa currently imports all raw materials for detergent. We aim to change all that.
“All the raw materials for our detergents are imported. We are producing that raw material to make Africa self-sufficient.
“Give us three to four years and Africa will no longer need to import fertilizer.
“We will make the continent self sufficient in potash, phosphate and urea reaching a production capacity of six million tonnes within 20 months.
“We are at three million tones, and in the next 20 months, we will be at six million tonnes of urea, which is the entire capacity of Egypt. We are getting there.”
Giving the background to the establishment of the refinery, he said: “For some of us, despite the boom of the capital market of the 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 want 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; 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,” he said.
“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.
“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.”
“We just commissioned in February 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, one 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.”
The refinery, said to be the largest in the world, was commissioned a year ago by former President Muhammadu Buhari.
It has a capacity of 650,000 barrels per day of crude oil and 900,000 metric tons of polypropylene in a single-train.
The single-train system allows for one integrated distillery system that can produce a variety of products.
