Indications emerged that the Dangote Refinery and Petrochemical Company has commenced operation. This came as the refinery received the fifth crude oil shipment.
It was gathered that a total of one million barrels of Bonny Light was supplied by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited last week.
The oil refinery, with 650,000 barrels per day capacity, started operations in May 2023. The refinery is designed to process crude oil grades from the three continents of Africa, Asia and America.
The first crude bulk raw materials for Dangote’s 650,000 barrel per day refinery arrived the country early December. An analytical firm, SP Global revealed the quoting market sources and tanker tracking data.
It said the development indicated that fuel production at the new $19 billion facility is finally set to start after years of delays.
According to the report, the OTIS tanker loaded a 950,000 barrel cargo of Agbami crude on December 6, and was discharged at the refinery’s terminal on Thursday, December 7.
The Suezmax tanker, chartered by state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPCL, is the first of Dangote’s initial crude supplies as the giant new plant starts to ramp up operations.
The refinery was officially completed in May 2023, but has yet to make any oil products due to a lack of domestic crude feedstock. NNPCL, with a 20 percent stake in the refinery, recently agreed to supply 6 million barrels of crude oil as feedstock to the refinery in December.
Operated by Chevron, Agbami is one of Nigeria’s largest deepwater developments pumping about 100,000 barrel per day in the central Niger Delta. It produces light sweet crude with a gravity of 47.9 API and a sulfur content of 0.04 percent.
NNPCL has been said to have chartered a number of other tankers to transport further crude shipments from offshore fields to the refinery later this month. The refinery’s startup has been repeatedly delayed since the project was unveiled in 2013, although most of the key units were installed in 2019.
The crude distillation unit has been designed to process 12 crudes at one time and has been engineered to process three Nigerian crude grades — Escravos, Bonny Light and Forcados.
Dangote refinery, once fully operational, the plant will yield 327,000 barrel per day of gasoline, 244,000 barrel per day of gasoil/diesel, 56,000 barrel per day of jet fuel/kerosene, as well as 290,000 mt/year of propane/LPG.
