Dangote Refinery Facility Maintenance Forces Upsurge In Fuel Import — S&P

Due to the ongoing maintenance work in the Dangote Refinery, Nigeria and neighbouring West African countries have ramp up fuel importation ffom Europe and other sources, according to S&P Global Commodities at Sea data.

Details provided by S&P indicate that petrol  imports to Nigeria and Togo surged from around 200,000 barrels per day in January to over 300,000 barrels per day in March, and roughly 250,000 b/d in April, close to Nigeria’s total of around 300,000 barrel per day national demand.

The PUNCH recalls that the Dangote refinery had earlier denied shutting down its petrol-processing unit for maintenance.

S&P Global reports on Wednesday that the Dangote refinery is restarting its main gasoline unit, the residue fluid catalytic cracker, and is evaluating the need for a second turnaround, a company executive said.

A Dangote executive who reportedly spoke to Platts, part of S&P Global Commodity Insights, on May 13, was quoted as saying that the company is in the process of returning refining units from a four-week turnaround to address ‘design issues’.

It was stated that the refinery is ramping up its RFCC, alkylation, and polypropylene units, but the company is yet to determine whether a second maintenance will be necessary later this year.

“The real picture can be seen only when we open the equipment,” the source has noted.

It was said that output from the Lagos refinery has become a key barometer for global gasoline cracks since production began last year, and unplanned April maintenance supported a Eurobob price rally when roughly 100,000 b/d of supply was suddenly taken offline.

According to the refinery executive, the plant’s crude distillation unit was last running at 550,000 b/d, roughly 85 per cent of its nameplate capacity.

After starting test runs in Q3 2024, roughly nine months after the refinery was inaugurated, the RFCC had reached 70 per cent of its capacity before the outage, the executive was reported.

The company now plans to ramp up the unit to its full capacity, allowing the site to finally scale crude throughput at the refinery to the site’s full 650,000 barrels per day potential, the source said.

Following its commission, two years ago, by former President Muhammadu Buhari not a few Nigerians predicted that the 650,000 barrel per day Refinery will produce enough for local consumption, with the potential of exporting to other parts of the Continent and Europe.

The $20 billion petrol-chemical Refinery has also assured that it can produce what Nigerians required, insisting that there’s no need to continue to import fuel into the country.