CHIEF Executive Officer of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), Mr. Farouk Ahmed, has said that Dangote Petroleum Refinery does not have an operating license and is just 45 percent completed.
Ahmed said this in an interview with State House correspondents on Thursday, questioning the quality of Dangote Refinery’s products. He said that Dangote Refinery’s claim that there were continued efforts by international oil companies (IOCs) to stifle its operations by way of low crude supply was false.
“Of course, there are lots of concerns about the supply of petroleum products nationwide and the claim by some media houses that we were trying to scuttle Dangote Refinery is not true,” he said.
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He noted that “Dangote Refinery is still in the pre-commissioning stage. It has not been licensed. We have not licensed them yet. I think they are about 45 percent completed.”
He said the country would not just rely on one refinery to feed it with petrol. “Dangote is requesting that we should suspend or stop all importation of petroleum products, especially automotive gas oil (AGO) or jet kero and direct all marketers to the refinery,” he further said.
He stressed that Dangote Refinery’s products were inferior to others in the market.
“In terms of quality, their quality is much, much inferior to the imported commodities,” he noted
Dangote’s Allegations
Dangote Refinery has accused IOCs of frustrating its refinery operations. Vice-President for Oil and Gas at Dangote Industries Limited (DIL), Mr Devakumar Edwin, had, on June 23, accused IOCs in Nigeria of trying to scuttle the survival of Dangote Refinery.
Edwin had told journalists at a one-day training in Lagos that IOCs were deliberately frustrating the refinery’s efforts to buy local crude by raising product prices above the market rate. He said the situation had forced the refinery to import crude from the United States and other nations, raising its operating costs.
He had also accused the NMDPRA of granting licences indiscriminately to marketers to import “dirty refined products into the country.”
“The Federal Government issued 25 licences to build refinery and we are the only one that delivered on promise. While the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) is trying their best to allocate the crude for us, the IOCs are deliberately and willfully frustrating our efforts to buy the local crude,” the Dangote Vice- President had noted.
He had also said the NUPRC recently met with crude oil producers and refinery owners in Nigeria to ensure full adherence to Domestic Crude Oil Supply Obligations (DCSO), as enunciated under section 109(2) of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA).
He, however, said it seemed the IOCs’ objective was to ensure that Dangote Refinery failed, stressing that it was either they were deliberately asking for ridiculous/humongous premium or they would simply state that crude was not available.
“At some point, we paid $6 over and above the market price. This has forced us to reduce our output as well as import crude from countries as far as the US, increasing our cost of production. It appears that the objective of the IOCs is to ensure that Nigeria remains a country which exports crude oil and imports refined petroleum products.”
Is Dangote Refinery completed?
While the Dangote Group says the refinery has been completed, some align with the regulator that it is yet to fully come on stream.
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In November 2023, a journalist, Mr David Hundeyin, had noted that “Dangote Refinery that is already ¼ the age of Ajaokuta and is nowhere near complete. Vision 3030.”
An petrol analyst, Mr Dan Chimeka, said the regulator could not have been wrong about the state of the refinery.
“I will rely on what the NMDPRA said. If the CEO says Dangote Refinery is 45 percent completed, so it is. However, we should not get involved in the politics. We all need petrol. What I see is just mere politics being played by all the parties involved,” Chimeka noted.