The President of the Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, has said the company is expanding the storage capacity of its refinery by 600 million litres.
Dangote spoke at the Afreximbank Annual Meetings and AfriCaribbean Trade & Investment Forum in Nassau, The Bahamas on Wednesday.
This, according to him, will push the facility storage capacity to 5.3 billion litres.
The Dangote Petrochemical Refinery refinery currently has 4.78 billion litres of storage capacity for refined petroleum products.
Asked to speak on whether or not his refinery would crash the pump price of petrol, which currently sells at around ₦700 per litre, Dangote gave no affirmative answer, but he quickly recounted how the price of diesel fell from 1,700 to ₦1,200 when his diesel flooded the market.
“The issue of gasoline is certainly a different issue. That one is being dealt with by the government. But let me give you an example. In the diesel, which the industries, transporters and everybody consume; when we first started, it was ₦1,700, and the dollar conversion was about ₦1,200 then. Immediately when we started, within two weeks we brought down the price to ₦1,000. We took it from ₦1,700 to ₦1,200 and from ₦1,200 to ₦1,700, we have given more than 60 per cent drop in price.
“With the currency now back up to about ₦1,500 per dollar, the price is still below ₦1,200. That’s a big improvement, from ₦1,700 to ₦1,200. And the diesel is available, we are not living from hand to mouth anymore,” Dangote replied when asked about a possible petrol price cut.
The business mogul said the refinery would be a strategic reserve for refined products.
“The country doesn’t have strategic reserves in terms of petrol, which is very dangerous. But in our plant now, when you came, we had only 4.78 billion litres of various tankage capacity. But right now we’re adding another 600 million.
“So effectively, as we go forward, the refinery will be the strategic reserve of the country in terms of petroleum products,” he noted.
He explained that international oil companies denied him access to their crude because they did not think he could succeed with the 650,000 barrels per day capacity refinery.
Dangote has been importing crude oil from the United States to get feedstock for the refinery.
The Kano-born businessman added further that Nigeria has for years been importing dirty fuel into the country.
Dangote asked the Federal Government to enforce regulations stopping the importation of dirty fuels.
Dangote to Expand Refinery Storage Capacity by 600 Million Litres
