Dangote Refinery Battles ‘Minor Fire’ Days After Accusing IOCs Of Sabotage

The Dangote Refinery has described the fire which engulfed the petrochemical company todays as a “minor fire’ incident that has now been taken out.

The fire outbreak which affected the effluent treatment plant occurred on Wednesday, creating panic in the Lekki Free Zone, Lagos where the $20 billion refinery was cited.

The incident came amidst claim by Dangote, that some international oil companies, IOCs, were trying to sabotage the refinery.

The company owned by Africa’s Richest man had accused the IOCs of not selling crude oil to the refinery forcing the company to source for crude as far as the United States and Europe.

The Vice President of the company Devakumar Edwin had while speaking to energy correspondent recently, called for government’s intervention in the face of this hostility by the IOCS.

Reacting to the fire incident, the spokesman of the company Anthony Chiejina, in a statement said operations at the refinery was not seriously impeded.

He explained that first responders swiftly rose up to the occasion by putting out the fire immediately.

Chiejina said, “There is no cause for alarm as the refinery is operating and there is no recorded injury or body harm to all our staff on duty,” he said

Edwin had lamented that the IOCs were seriously working to frustrate the company by denying it crude oil supply in other to make it ‘fail’.

Edwin stated, “The IOCs are deliberately and wilfully frustrating our efforts to buy the local crude. The NUPRC recently met with crude oil producers as well as refineries owners in Nigeria in a bid to ensure full adherence to DCSO, as enunciated under Section 109(2) of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA).

“It seems that the IOCs’ objective is to ensure that our petroleum refinery fails. It is either they are deliberately asking for ridiculous and humongous premium or they simply state that crude is not available.

“At some point, we paid $6 over and above the market price. This has forced us to reduce our output as well as import crude from countries as far as the US, increasing our cost of production.

“It appears that the objective of the IOCs is to ensure that Nigeria remains a country, which exports crude oil and imports refined petroleum products. They are keen on exporting the raw materials to their home countries, creating employment and wealth for their countries, adding to their Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and dumping the expensive refined products into Nigeria, thus making us to be dependent on imported products.”