As Nigeria excitedly expects the resumption of the operations of Dangote Refinery, Lagos, Major Oil Marketers have explained how Nigeria can benefit fully from it when the refinery begins operations.
Clement Isong, the Chief Executive Officer of the Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria said that unless the deregulation of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) price was fully completed it will be difficult to reap the fruits the refinery will provide.
“Dangote Refinery is situated in an export free zone so what this means is it will only impact Nigeria if we fully deregulate the petroleum prices. If Nigeria deregulates petroleum prices it makes sense to sell that product in Nigeria as well as export it,” he said.
“The important thing is that we need to complete the deregulation of the downstream pump prices if you want to fully benefit from all that the Dangote refinery will bring.”
Dangote Refinery which is set to be the world’s biggest single-train facility is expected to begin operations in the first quarter of 2021, according to Devakumar Edwin, the company’s group executive director, although experts think its completion will not be till 2023. Experts have said that the functionality of the refinery will reduce the heavy demand for foreign exchange thereby strengthening the naira.
The refinery would produce not only PMS but petrochemicals and a fertilizer plant. It will also process a variety of light and medium grades of crude to produce Euro-V quality clean fuels including gasoline and diesel as well as jet fuel and polypropylene. It is expected to produce 10.4 million tonnes (Mt) of gasoline, 4.6Mt of diesel, and 4Mt of jet fuel a year. It will also annually produce 0.69Mt of polypropylene, 0.24Mt of propane, 32,000t of Sulphur, and 0.5Mt of carbon black feed.
Even after the refinery begins operations, reaching the full capacity of producing 650,000 barrels per day will take a while which could run into months or years, the CEO said.
Last December, Chris Ngige declared that the federal government was no longer involved in the fixing of petrol prices and that the price of PMS was now strictly determined by ‘market-related factors’.
Isong further said, “Dangote Refinery complex does not only consist of a refinery. It also consists of a petrochemical plant and a fertilizer plant. What this means is that the entire processing hub will fully process the crude oil in Nigeria. So it is not only the refinery we will benefit from but the petrochemicals and the fertilizer plant which are feedstock to other industries which will lead to a lot of production, things we can use to further industrialize Nigeria. That we can sell not just in Nigeria but export.
“It Is a fantastic process that will only fully benefit Nigeria if we deregulate pump prices.”