Alhaji Aliko Dangote, President of the Dangote Group has revealed the company’s readiness to meet supply demands of Nigerians as far as petrol is concerned.
According to him, Dangote Petroleum Refinery currently has over 500 million litres of petrol in its reservoir.
At the tour of the $20bn Lekki-based facility with the Zambia Minister- Makozo Chikote who visited the Dangote refinery in Lekki, Lagos State, seeking collaboration with the founder to help solve the Zambia’s energy security issue, on Saturday, Dangote announced that the company now produces enough petrol for local supply.
“We can satisfy more than the local needs of Nigeria. As we speak, we have more than half a billion litres (of petrol). We have more than N600bn worth of stocks here today in the refinery. We have more than enough. The refinery is producing enough refined products, like gasoline, diesel, and kerosene, to meet 100 per cent of Nigeria’s requirements.
“Now we are ramping up production. We must be at our full capacity by next month. But we have to do quite a lot of arrangements in terms of crude supply,” the CEO said.
Talking about quality, Dangote said all refineries in Africa are shutting down because of his company.
“In terms of quality, there is actually no refinery in Africa, even in Europe that can produce our type of quality. We want to be flexible, you know the laws keep changing.”
“Today, they will say 150 parts per million; tomorrow it’s 50 ppm, but we can produce up to zero ppm. This means we can do winter diesel, we can do Euro-5. No refinery around here can do that. When you read the news, you see that a lot of refineries now, especially in Europe, shutting down because of our own refinery. Our refinery is a percentage of the world’s production.
“Obviously, if we pump a lot, some of them will not be able to sell, that’s why in some countries, they will offer them money to just keep dumping. But then, we have to weather that storm up to the time that we will be able to be on our feet,” he added.
In conclusion, Africa’s Richest man, Dangote revealed that the total consumed percentage of fuel by Nigerians is just 40% of what his refinery produces.
