The founder of the Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, has revealed that the Dangote Petroleum Refinery plans to list between 5 and 10 percent of its shares on the Nigerian Exchange Limited within the next year.

In an interview with S&P Global on October 20, Dangote said the plan follows the model used for Dangote Cement and Dangote Sugar Refinery.

“We don’t want to keep more than 65-70 per cent,” Dangote said, adding that the share sale would be carried out gradually, based on investor interest and market conditions.

The billionaire added that the group is exploring strategic partnerships with Middle Eastern firms to advance the refinery’s expansion and develop a new petrochemical project in China.

“Our business concept is going to change. Now instead of being 100 percent Dangote-owned, we’ll have other partners,” he noted.

Dangote said the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited may raise its stake in the refinery after cutting its interest to 7.2 per cent, but only when the next phase of the project’s expansion is fully underway.

“I want to demonstrate what this refinery can do, then we can sit down and talk,” the group president said.

The refinery also revealed plans to boost its output to 1.4 million barrels per day (bpd), surpassing the world’s largest refinery in Jamnagar, India, which has a capacity of 1.36 million bpd.

The 650,000-barrel-per-day Dangote Refinery is Africa’s largest oil refinery and the world’s largest single-train refinery by production capacity.

Spanning 2,635 hectares, it is also the largest single-train refinery complex by land area.