The Dangote refinery in Nigeria, Africa’s greatest and latest crude processing facility, is ready to quickly start manufacturing of gasoline, probably upending world gasoline flows.
For years, Nigeria has been importing the gasoline it consumes, however the newly operational refinery is poised to show OPEC’s largest African crude oil producer from a gasoline importer to a gasoline exporter, impacting gas market balances, particularly in Europe.
The Dangote refinery started the manufacturing of fuels in January 2024, marking the start-up of the plant that has seen years of delays.
The ability has but to start manufacturing of gasoline, however it’s on the point of producing massive volumes of the gas, sources conversant in the operations informed Bloomberg on Monday.
The refinery is primarily utilizing Nigerian crude, however additionally it is shopping for U.S. crude and Brazilian crude as feedstock.
The ability, which has a processing capability of 650,000 barrels per day (bpd), will meet 100% of Nigeria’s demand for all refined petroleum merchandise and also will have a surplus of every of the merchandise for export.
It’s anticipated that after the refinery is absolutely operational sooner or later in 2025, greater than half of its processing capability might be earmarked for gasoline manufacturing.
The Dangote refinery expects to export diesel to clients in Europe, in addition to gasoline to Latin American and African markets. Nevertheless, manufacturing of Euro V gasoline, the gasoline complying with Europe’s emissions requirements, isn’t anticipated to be produced till late 2024, in line with analysts at Information World Vitality.
In the course of June, the Dangote group’s president Aliko Dangote informed Nigerian media that the refinery was delaying the beginning of gasoline deliveries after the center of July.
Again then, Dangote, Africa’s richest man, mentioned that the refinery would be capable of take gasoline to the market by the third week of July.
This timeline has slipped, and most business analysts count on appreciable volumes of gasoline out of Nigeria to hit worldwide markets subsequent 12 months.