Analyst at the Standard Poor’s’ Global Commodities Insights, Kelly Norway, has said that contrary to the insinuation, that Dangote refinery will start the supply of petrol next month, it projected that the company will commence the supply of petrol in the fourth quarter of this year.
Norways made this disclosure in a podcast titled “Exploring West Africa’s oil product flows in a changing refining landscape” where its analysts shared insights on the latest trends in the energy market across Europe and West Africa, according to nairametrics.
In her remark, She underlined the impact of the Dangote refinery to significantly reduce energy imports across the West African sub-region pegging the figure for petrol at 290,000 barrels daily between 2024 and 2026.
She said, “We are starting to see signs of activities, but all eyes are on when we’ll start to see gasoline production will commence from that project. There is a significant amount of pressure from the Nigerian government for a significant volume of that supply to be sent to the domestic market.
“In reality, when we see that start scale-up is still subject to debate. Dangote has recently been espousing some punchy timelines. They have most recently been saying that they are looking to produce gasoline by May. But in reality, our analysts expect that would be something like the fourth quarter of this year in a more realistic timeline.”
In May 2023 the Dangote refinery was formally commissioned but has been unable to run at full capacity because of a series of failures. However, in December it started receiving crude oil and at the end of March began to distribute diesel on the local market for retailers.
The management of the refinery had last week, announced the reduction in the price of diesel to N1000/litre.
S&P had also recently alleged that the Dangote refinery reduced the price of its diesel to the Nigerian market as a result of the high sulphur content of the product.
