Nigeria’s Dangote Refinery, owned by Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, has begun the export of refined petroleum products to neighbouring West African countries.
This is according to a newspaper report by Bloomberg on Tuesday.
However, there are claims that whereas the Refinery is getting crude from the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPCL, in Naira, it is carrying out the export deal in dollars.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu ordered the sale of crude oil to Dangote Refinery in Naira, an order that has been confirmed to have been implemented by the NNPCL.
The Bloomberg publication quoted data sourced from Vortexa, Kpler, Precise Intelligence, a port report, and a ship-tracking platform and noted that a tanker has hauled a shipment of gasoline from the Dangote Petroleum Refinery to waters off the coast of Togo, a neighbouring West African country.
Investigation by Bloomberg showed that the tanker named The CL Jane Austen recently loaded more than 300,000 barrels from Dangote.
The tanker sailed west, according to data from Vortexa, Kpler, Precise Intelligence, a port report, and ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg.
“It’s now floating off the coast of Lome, a popular area for ship-to-ship transfers,” the report added.
This comes weeks after the chairman of NPA, Ghana, who spoke at the OTL Africa Downstream Oil Conference in Lagos, said importing from Nigeria rather than Europe would reduce the prices of other goods and services by removing freight costs.
“If the refinery reaches 650,000 bpd a day capacity, all that volume cannot be consumed by Nigeria alone, so instead of us importing as we do right now from Rotterdam, it will be much easier for us to import from Nigeria, and I believe that will bring down our prices,” Hamid said.
Recall that two weeks ago the refinery report emerged that the 650,000 barrels per day refinery was to begin fuel exports to South Africa, Angola, and Namibia.
Speaking on the latest development, sources familiar with the matter said, “I can authoritatively confirm to you that talks are actually at the advanced stage with Ghana, Angola, Namibia, and South Africa. Also, the initial discussion is coming up with Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso, and the Central African Republic.”.
However, Dangote has not officially announced that it has begun petrol exports to West Africa.
This comes as Dangote Refinery and the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria recently sealed an agreement to directly purchase 60 million litres weekly from the Lagos-based refinery.
Media Talk Africa reports that fuel recorded a marginal drop in price in the past week upon Dangote Refinery and IPMAN deal.
Economists on Tuesday hinted that Nigeria’s inflationary pressures may drop in the coming months if the price of gasoline continues to ease with Dangote refinery.
