It’s no secret that Nigerian business mogul and Africa’s richest man is building a private refinery that will allow Nigeria to refine its own crude, generating enough to serve the country but what may not be apparent is that Aliko Dangote who was once on the list of Forbes 10 richest men in the world may well be making his way back into the top ten again when his refinery begins operation as early as 2021 reaching full production capacity before the end of the year.
Devakumar Edwin, a group director at Dangote Industries Ltd. said the refinery will be ready for commissioning early 2021 and could reach full production capacity before the end of the year.
It’s true that the world is going green and demand for crude will eventually dwindle but the world isn’t close to shutting the door on crude just yet meaning demand for crude and it’s product will yet stick around for a while, long enough that’s well worth it to invest in a privately owned refinery.
Nigeria is Africa’s largest crude producer but had hitherto lacked the infrastructure to refine enough crude for its needs, the Dangote refinery will produce enough to serve nationally with a little excess for export as the group targets jet fuels for European economies and gasoline for South Americans said Edwin. He also highlighted certain security measures to be taken in protecting life and assets. Dangote group will invest in vessels he said as the company would not want any transport operator holding it for Ransome.
Dangote Group will not participate in the crude-for-fuel swap deal that is being chaperoned by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. (NNPC) as it will take full advantage of locally drilled crude oil.
“We are going to buy the crude just at the export price and sell our products at the import price the crude swap is operating only for importers of the product,” said Edwin.
Seeing as Dangote owns roughly 90-95% stake at his company the profit from refined crude for Dangote over 2-3 years could well propel him back to a top 10 position which he had been absent from for about 2 years, all things being equal with Dollar-Naira rates.