Alhaji Aliko Dangote, the president of the Dangote Group, has announced plans to increase his refinery’s storage capacity by 600 million litres.
He claims that this will allow the refinery to have 5.3 billion litres of storage capacity. At present, the refined petroleum products may be stored in 4.78 billion litres at the Dangote Petrochemical Refinery.
On Wednesday, Dangote delivered a speech at the Afreximbank Annual Meetings and AfriCaribbean Trade & Investment Forum held in Nassau, Bahamas.
The millionaire claimed that because foreign oil giants did not want him to succeed, they would not sell crude oil to his refinery.
When asked if his refinery will lower the price of petrol at the pump, which is currently about N700 per litre, Dangote did not respond positively, but he did immediately narrate how the price of diesel dropped from N1,700 to N1,200 as his fuel oversupplied the market.
“The issue of gasoline is certainly a different issue. That one is being dealt with by the government. But let me give you an example. In the diesel, which the industries, transporters and everybody consume; when we first started, it was N1,700, and the dollar conversion was about N1,200 then. Immediately when we started, within two weeks we brought down the price to N1,000. We took it from N1,700 to N1,200 and from N1,200 to N1,700, we have given more than 60 per cent drop in price.
“With the currency now back up to about N1,500 per dollar, the price is still below N1,200. That’s a big improvement, from N1,700 to N1,200. And the diesel is available, we are not living from hand to mouth anymore,” Dangote replied when asked about a possible petrol price cut.
The refinery will act as a strategic reserve for refined products, according to the business mogul.
“So effectively, as we go forward, the refinery will be the strategic reserve of the country in terms of petroleum products,” he noted.
The richest man in Africa revealed that foreign oil corporations refused to let him use their crude because they did not think he could successfully operate a refinery capable of producing 650,000 barrels per day.
“In a system where, for 35 years, people are used to counting good money, and all of a sudden, they see that the days of counting that money have come to an end, you don’t expect them to pray for you. Of course, you expect them to fight back.
“And I think that is the process that we’re now really going through. But the truth is that, yes, the country, the sub-region, and also the continent, of sub-Saharan Africa, need this refinery. So, you expect them to fight through non-supply of crude, non-purchase of the product, but I think it’s all temporary. We’ll get there,” he added.
In order to supply feedstock for the refinery, Dangote has started importing crude oil from the United States.
The businessman, who was born in Kano, went on to say that Nigeria has been importing unclean petroleum for a long time. Dangote requested that rules against the importing of unclean fuels be enforced by the federal government. According to him, a large number of cancer cases in Nigeria and in Africa can be attributed to dirty fuels.
