4 months ago
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The Chairman of the Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, says international oil companies in Nigeria are not ready to sell crude oil to the 650,000 barrels capacity oil refinery.
Dangote made this disclosure in an interview with CNN.
According to him, the international oil companies were used to exporting crude for foreign exchange and they were not ready to stop.
Dangote said though the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Ltd was doing its best to supply feedstock to the refinery, the IOCs wanted to sell outside the country.
“The NNPC is doing its best, but some of the IOCs, they are struggling to give us crude, everybody is used to exporting and nobody wants to stop exporting,” he stated.
The business mogul said Africa was not growing because it sells raw materials to the Western world and buys same as finished goods.
“Africa is not going the way it should because we export raw materials and import finished goods. It doesn’t matter what it is, even if it is gold or whatever, raw material is always priced at a ridiculous amount compared to finished goods,” Dangote said.
He regretted that some individuals benefitting from oil import did not want the refinery to succeed.
The PUNCH recalls that the refinery recently signed an agreement to import 24 million barrels of crude oil from the United States.
Speaking to CNN, Dangote disclosed that the refinery would take about 21 million barrels of crude oil from Nigeria every month, adding that 21 ships of crude would no longer import or export oil into Africa
“Almost 21 ships will no longer leave the African continent, either from Nigeria or Angola, we will be able to take those crudes and be able to refine and distribute the product. I feel very proud as an African that we have been able to demonstrate that it can be done, and we’ve done it.
“If we take all the crudes from Nigeria, it means we will take 21 million barrels per month and that will also help in terms of reducing the C02 emissions. Rather than ships coming all the way from Europe to bring in products, or the ships going out of Nigeria, 21 ships going out of Nigeria every month, and then you have the product coming into Nigeria. In totality, when you calculate, you are talking about 480 ships of 1 million barrels,” he noted.
Dangote disclosed that he would not have opted for a refinery if he had known what it entails.
“We did know what we were getting into when we said we wanted to build the refinery, if we knew, we would have run away. We wouldn’t have tried it, no. I can tell you. It was very very tough,” he remarked.
Asked if he had started making money from the refinery, he replied, “We will start making money soon. It is not about making money only, it also gives us a great satisfaction that we are making Africa great.”
