Dangote Group President Aliko Dangote rose yesterday to defend the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) on the purported denial of crude oil supply to his 650,000 barrels per day (bpd) capacity refinery by the national oil company.
In a brief response to the claim, Dangote said the Mele Kyari-led NNPCL is ready and willing to feed the refinery with crude oil in few weeks’ time to enable the commencement of refining operations at the facility.
The business mogul, who is the chief promoter of the $19.5 billion facility, reputed to be the world’s largest single-train refinery, made the clarification following misconceptions drawn from a recent interview granted to S&P Global Commodity Insights, by the company’s Group Executive Director, Devakumar Edwin.
However, a portion of the chat, where Edwin explained the delayed commencement of production at the refinery, was misconstrued in some sessions of the media to mean denial of feedstock supply by the NNPC.
But in the statement issued yesterday, Dangote said the NNPCL had never denied the company crude oil supply, contrary to some media reports making the rounds.
According to him, the NNPCL has been very encouraging and supportive in the Group’s business trajectory in the areas of oil and gas.
Dangote said: “Being a shareholder and a responsive partner, it is an aberration to assume that the NNPC will in anyway do anything to truncate or delay the commencement of operations of our refinery. We will start refining with our Nigeria crude.
“We deeply appreciate our partnership with the NNPC and its subsidiaries, under the leadership of Group Chief Executive Officer, (GCEO) NNPC Ltd., Mr. Mele Kyari” Dangote concluded.”
Dangote, through the ultra-modern facility, plans to make Nigeria self-sufficient in refined petroleum products and free a huge volume for export, thus ending the embarrassing title of Africa’s largest oil producer that imports all its refined petroleum products.
The Nation.
