President of the Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, says his recently launched high capacity refinery in Lagos will commence refining operations in a few weeks with crude oil from Nigeria.
Dangote disclosed this on Wednesday.
He said the refinery had received a firm commitment from the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) for the regular supply.
This was in reaction to a report that the 650,000 barrels per day (bpd) capacity refinery was denied crude oil by the NNPC and has to resort to crude import.
The clarification follows misconceptions drawn from a recent interview granted to S&P Global Commodity Insights, by the company’s Group Executive Director, Devakumar Edwin.
The $19.5bn facility is considered be the world’s largest single-train refinery.
“Being a shareholder and a responsive partner, it is an aberration to assume that the NNPC will in anyway do anything to truncate or delay the commencement of operations of our refinery.
“We will start refining with our Nigeria crude.
“We deeply appreciate our partnership with the NNPC and its subsidiaries, under the leadership of Group Chief Executive Officer, (GCEO) NNPC Ltd., Mr. Mele Kyari,” Dangote said.
Dangote, through the ultra-modern facility, plans to make Nigeria self-sufficient in refined petroleum products and stop the huge volume of fuel import by Africa’s largest oil producer.
(vitalnewsngr.com)
