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The Dangote Petroleum Refinery has alleged that petroleum products marketers in Nigeria complained to President Bola Tinubu that the drop in its diesel price to ₦900 per litre is negatively affecting their businesses.
This is according to Devakumar Edwin, the Vice President of Dangote Industries Limited (DIL), who spoke on a Twitter Spaces session organised by Nairametrics on Wednesday, September 11, 2024.
Recall Dangote Refinery started the rollout of diesel and Jet A1 from its facility, located in the Lekki Free Zone in Lagos a few months ago. Since it entered the market, there has been a significant decrease in diesel prices from nearly ₦2,000 to below ₦1,000.
However, Edwin said the development had not gone down well with local petroleum products marketers who wrote to President Tinubu to lodge their discontent.
“Petroleum product marketers in Nigeria have written to President Bola Tinubu to complain that the refinery local prices which have dropped from N1,200 to N1,000 and now N900 per litre are impacting their businesses negatively,” he said.
Edwin also touched on some challenges the Dangote Refinery is contending with and how they've impacted fuel supplies and prices in Nigeria.
He said the Dangote Refinery struggles to sell about 29 diesel tankers daily due to low patronage from local petroleum product importers.
“As a result of this poor local patronage, the refinery exports most of its diesel and aviation fuel,” he stated.
Dangote Refinery ready to export refined products
The DIL executive said the Dangote Refinery products would be exported if the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited and other local petroleum dealers were unwilling to patronise it.
"We have been exporting aviation fuel, we have been producing kerosene, we have been producing diesel, but yesterday, we started the production of PMS. So, that was the last stage. The only thing now left out is petrochemicals.
“So, the good news for the country is we have started producing PMS from our refinery,” he had said on a radio programme," he added.
On whether the petrol would be sold locally, Edwin stressed that there had been a gang-up among local marketers not to lift Dangote Refinery products, saying that the company would be forced to sell its fuel to other countries if the trend continued.
“Well, I explained how there has been a kind of a blockade from lifting our products within the country. The traders have been trying to block (it), and so now we have been exporting our petroleum products. PMS, we are ready to pump in as much as possible to the country.
“But if the traders or NNPC are not buying the product, obviously, we will end up exporting the PMS as we are doing with the aviation jet and diesel,” he declared.