The Nigerian National Petroleum Cor porat i o n (NNPC), owner of ailing refineries in Nigeria, has agreed to a collaboration with Africa’s richest man, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, over his $12 billion refinery. Group Managing Director of NNPC, Mallam Mele Kyari, and President/ Chief Executive Officer of the Dangote Group made this known after a meeting at the NNPC Towers in Abuja, yesterday.

The national oil company, Kyari said, was not in contest for market share with the forthcoming Dangote Refinery, but rather providing support to the promoters of the project to boost in-country refining capacity. He explained that as the chief enabler of the Nigerian economy, the NNPC had a duty to rally industry players like Dangote Group to achieve the long-held target of making Nigeria a net exporter of petroleum products. The NNPC GMD assured that the same level of support would be provided to other promoters of refineries, noting that the ultimate goal was to enhance in-country production to the point of self-sufficiency and ultimately for export.

Earlier in his presentation, Dangote emphasized that the business approach of the Dangote Refinery was to see NNPC as a collaborator rather than a competitor, noting that the refinery would rely heavily on the Corporation’s invaluable knowledge of the refining business in Nigeria to achieve its central objective. Dangote aligned his company with the Federal Government’s aspiration to ensure adequate incountry refining capacity, stating that upon completion, the refinery would dedicate 53 per cent of its projected 650,000 barrels per day refining capacity to the production of petrol.

“The most important thing for us is to see how we can partner with NNPC; it is not to see how we can compete with NNPC. We would like NNPC to be part of us and we also want to be part of NNPC. I think that is the only way we can achieve a win-win situation,” he said. Sinopec, China’s leading energy and chemical company had, on Monday, July 29, announced that a completed atmospheric tower it had built was sailing for the shores of Lagos.
The facility, which it described as the world’s largest, is set to be installed at the Dangote Refinery. The wharf carrying the tower left the city of Ningbo and is set to arrive in Nigeria in weeks. According to experts, the primary purpose of the atmospheric distillation tower is to separate crude oil into its components (or distillation cuts, distillation fractions) for further processing by other processing units.

Dangote disclosed in an interview with Reuters News Agency in 2016 that the country’s first private oil refinery was estimated at a cost of $12 billion with the funds to be pooled from multiple sources. The 2019 date to start operations had largely been thought of as unfeasible by a number of industry watchers. With a critical machinery coming on stream, it is believed that work could be nearing completion.