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Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu has summoned Aliko Dangote to an emergency assembly with oil trade officers and regulators on Tuesday to debate supplying the industrialist’s new $20bn refinery with crude.
The assembly in Nigeria’s capital Abuja follows months of hypothesis that Dangote, the nation’s wealthiest man, had fallen out with the president and the state oil firm, Nigerian Nationwide Petroleum Company, which has not been supplying his refinery with sufficient crude.
This month, in an indication of a thaw in relations, NNPC agreed to provide 365,000 barrels a day of crude to be paid for in naira. However phrases have but to be finalised.
Talking to the Monetary Occasions, Dangote mentioned: “We’re assembly to verify every part is put collectively. There are plenty of points in regards to the trade charge and pricing.”
Dangote mentioned his refinery, Nigeria’s largest infrastructure undertaking in a long time, was already producing 420,000 b/d after coming on-line earlier this yr and would attain its capability of 650,000 b/d by the second quarter of subsequent yr. The precise state of manufacturing on the refinery has been shrouded in secrecy.
Dangote mentioned he might provide the nation’s complete petrol requirement, which he estimated at 30mn to 35mn litres a day.
The assembly, confirmed by the Nigerian presidency, had been referred to as to debate “the modalities” of supplying Dangote’s refinery with crude and Nigeria’s market with petrol, Dangote mentioned. Though he would promote petrol at market costs, he mentioned, the worth is perhaps mounted quarter-by-quarter to keep away from extreme volatility on the pump.
Dangote has spent almost a decade constructing the 650,000-barrels-a-day refinery, the largest of its type on this planet, on swampland outdoors Lagos. The thought was to finish what he mentioned was an “absurd” state of affairs through which Africa’s largest oil producer imported nearly all of its refined petroleum merchandise due to an absence of refining capability within the nation.
However he claimed an “oil mafia” was making an attempt to scupper his plans. “There are many vested pursuits. They’ve been making thousands and thousands of {dollars}” Dangote mentioned, referring to merchants exporting Nigerian crude and importing refined merchandise.
“They’ll combat to see how they’ll cease us,” he added.
He additionally accused unnamed merchants of flooding the west African market by way of Lomé port in Togo with low cost diesel combined with chemical substances, in addition to with Russian oil, in an effort to undercut costs.
“I don’t wish to identify them x, y, z,” he mentioned. “They’re promoting on credit score, with out assure. They’re doing every part in order that they don’t purchase from us. It’s working in a method, however we will certainly survive.”
Dangote denied that he had fallen out with Tinubu after months of rumours that the president, who got here to energy in 2023, has not been as supportive of his companies as his predecessors. There was no dangerous blood between them, Dangote insisted, including that that they had just lately dined collectively in Paris. “When you have an issue with someone, the particular person won’t entertain you for 2 and a half hours,” he mentioned.
Dangote additionally rejected accusations, together with from the pinnacle of the petroleum regulatory authority, that he was a monopolist. Such allegations, he mentioned, had made him suppose twice about shifting into energy and metal, the doable subsequent levels for his enterprise empire, which started with salt, sugar and cement.
“If I carry on investing I’ll run into bother at some point as a result of I’ll find yourself proudly owning every part,” he mentioned.
