Contrary to the believes of several Nigerians that emergence of Dangote Refinery coming up in Lekki, Lagos State will crash the price of petroleum products, a Petroleum marketing consultant, Alhaji Mohammed Sani has said the refinery remains an international private investment which can only sell its products according to prevailing international prices.
Dangote Group is developing the South-East Quadrant of the Free Trade Zone in Lekki, which is about 2635 hectares of land for the establishment of 650,000bpd capacity refinery complex, petrochemical, gas and fertilizer plant with a projected cost of over $12billion.
In an interview with Business Hilights during a visit of scholars from Lagos Business School, Lekki to the site of the Dangote Refinery also in Lekki, he said “I think where Nigeria can gain from the investment include job creation, oil and gas industry capacity development and a slight reduction in prices of products because there is no cost of imports either shipping or port charges because marketers can go and load at the refinery directly”.
“If we are looking for how pump price will come down, then we need to tell the government to remove the bottlenecks frustrating private refineries in taking off. Recall that even during former President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration, about 14 private refineries licences were issued. Find out what is holding them back. Its unfavourable government policies in the sector. Dangote was able to whether the storm because of who he is.
Continuing, Adeola argued that it will take time for pump price to come down just because we are oil producing country or Dangote refinery has begin production.
He said; that can only work when the majority of products we use or buy in Nigeria is coming from functioning government owned refineries which some of us doubt if that scenario could exist again in this country.
“Why do I say so; as a government, it will be suicidal for it to lure investors to building refineries and come back to crash the price because it is refining too. Moreover, you cannot be a regulator and at the same time, a player in any business sector including oil refining.
So it’s important for Nigerian consumers to understand that Nigeria cannot stand alone in enjoying cheap petroleum product prices simply because we produce it or private refineries are coming up. Petroleum products are international products and their prices are determined internationally.
Earlier in his brief address to visitors from the LBS at the site of the emerging refinery in Lekki, President of Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote said on completion of the projects next year, 60,000 direct jobs and millions of indirect jobs would have been created.
Business Hilights gathered that the landscape on which the refinery project was being built is six times bigger than the size of Victoria Island in Lagos. The site of Dangote Petrochemical Project is 10 times bigger than Eleme Petrochemical Industry in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.
Revealing that the refinery as the largest single-train petrochemical facility in the world, Dangote said the crude oil processing factory is designed to refine 650,000 barrels per day. He said the facility is completely designed for Nigerian crude oil, with flexibility to process products from other countries. He added that he is building Africa’s largest urea plant to produce three million tons of fertilizers yearly.
According to him, “Everything we are doing here is basically to transform the Nigerian economy. And it is not only to transform, but to also diversify our economy from single commodity market. We are taking a bold step through this petrochemical project to create values that would help us to achieve this aim.”
Continuing, Dangote disclosed that his business had grown from a commodity trading company to a diversified global conglomerate in the last two decades, saying he was pumping huge resources into energy production and agriculture across West Africa to close the deficit in food production and export.
