Although the rewards always eventually come after a coordinated inward push, the seven months of the year so far have seen several strenuous obstacles for the Dangote Oil Refinery, but the problem with the International Oil Companies (IOCs) being high-handed over crude oil supply to the plant had been key. Now that has been resolved, according to Aliko Dangote, the president of the refinery.

Journalists got an exclusive Lekki Free Trade Zone tour where the plant is located on Sunday, 14 July 2024. It was through this exhibition anchored by Africa’s richest man Dangote that steered the company to Dangote Oil Refinery listing on the Nigerian Exchange by March 2025 at the latest, and why there had been delays with the production or sales of Premium Motor Spirit – also petrol.

We plan to list the refinery and petrochemical before the end of the first quarter of next year, he says while confirming the issue of crude has been settled last week but we hope that the IOCs will respect it.

Under Nigeria’s Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) 2021, international oil companies are obligated to meet the local demand for crude oil such as making sure all refineries in Nigeria get their share, but that had not been the experience of the Dangote plant until yesterday. Now, oil marketers will be able to fill their tankers with petrol by August the latest due date set for sales.

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One time it was June that the tankers could start to drive in to make their bulk purchase; then it became the following month but they did not materialise but it wasn’t as a result of a lack of will by both the refinery and the petrochemical company owned by Dangote.

Three weeks ago, Devakumar Edwin, the Vice President of Oil and Gas at Dangote Industries Limited (DIL) corroborated the issues when he explained, talking to a different set of journalists, the Energy Editors during training, that it would be recalled that the NUPRC, recently met with crude oil producers as well as refinery owners in Nigeria, in a bid to ensure full adherence to Domestic Crude Oil Supply Obligations (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.

Already retailers of other petroleum products like diesel and jet fuel are seeing the benefit of a refinery that provides what they need for a much cheaper price, unlike the early months of President Bola Tinubu stopping fuel subsidies because the 2023 budget, which his predecessor submitted, did not provide for it.

It had taken concerted efforts to bring the refinery to the state of existence. When international lenders wouldn’t bulge, local commercial banks banded together to provide the finance needed to build the largest single-train refinery in the world with the capacity to process about 650,000 barrels of crude oil per day.

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The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) started with a 7.2 per cent stake but the goal was to own 20 percent, but this is still hanging.