Instead of the following month as the firm has claimed, analysts at Standard and Poor’s Global Commodities Insights have predicted that the Dangote refinery will begin supplying gasoline in the fourth quarter of this year.
At the S&P podcast “Exploring West Africa’s oil product flows in a changing refining landscape,” where its analysts provided views on the most recent changes in the energy market across Europe and West Africa, Kelly Norways, an expert on African energy, revealed this.
She discussed how the Dangote refinery will drastically cut energy imports into the West African subregion, estimating that daily gasoline consumption would reach 290,000 barrels starting in 2024.
In her own words, “While there are some indications of activity, everyone is waiting to see when that project will start producing gasoline. The Nigerian government is putting a lot of pressure on a large portion of that supply to go to the domestic market.”
“In actuality, there is still disagreement over when to start scaling up. Dangote has been endorsing some forceful deadlines lately. Most recently, they have stated that they hope to start producing gasoline in May. However, based on a more realistic timeframe, our analyst anticipates it to occur around the fourth quarter of this year.”
The conversation also covered how the dynamics of the flow of petroleum products into West Africa have changed in recent months, with less petroleum being supplied into the continent as a result of the Netherlands, one of the continent’s long-standing suppliers.
It stated that from 2022, quality improvements and new rules from the Netherlands’ refineries in Rotterdam and Amsterdam have led to a decrease in supplies.
Although the Dangote refinery was formally put into service in May 2023, some obstacles have prevented it from operating at full capacity. Nonetheless, it started obtaining crude oil in December and, at last, in March, it began supplying diesel to local market marketers.
The refinery stated last week that it was lowering the price of diesel to N1000 per litre after it had previously been selling for about N1500 per litre.
