Dangote Refinery, Nigeria to Stabilize World Oil Production - OPEC

Posted on : Thursday , 25th April 2019

OPEC is confident that the Dangote Oil Refinery will be serving to drive world crude oil refining capacity raise especially in Africa by 2020.

In the current edition of its World Oil Outlook (WOO), the Organisation said that the Dangote refinery, which is the first privately owned and functioned refinery in Nigeria, will refine 6,50,000 crude oil barrels per day at installed capacity. Currently, total world oil production in 2019 averaged 80,622,000 barrels per day. Around 68 per cent comes from the top ten countries, and an overlapping 44 per cent comes from the fourteen current OPEC members.

By 2020 the world is anticipating some volume development from Nigeria, either through the rehabilitation of existing refineries – in part to raise their utilization rates, or through grassroots projects, like the Dangote Oil Refinery.

This year, there is an increase in confidence that the Dangote project in Nigeria will indeed change the picture.

In 2020 it is estimated that the per day barrel production is to swing to an excess of around 0.3 mb/d by 2022 to 2023. It realised that this regional outlook is not usual and that it hinges widely on a single project.

OPEC noted that finishing the project would lower the imports of petroleum products in West Africa.Since the project is in West Africa, its execution does not necessarily alter the situations in North and East/South Africa. What should happen, especially in West Africa, is a depletion in the need and opportunity for product imports.

The organisation stated that in recent WOOs, the percentage of projects considered firm has been at a constant low, for example, 0.4 mb/d for the 2017 to 2022 period in WOO 2017.

This year, the outlook constitutes a major reversal from the recent history. For the first time in many years, projected firm additions at 1.1 mb/d exceed regional demand growth for 2018 to 2023 at 0.7 mb/d.This change associates mainly to one project in Nigeria now under construction. Bearing in mind that this one major project is in West Africa, the prospects for North and East/South Africa continues to be for further increases in regional net product imports.

It must be kept in mind that this regional outlook is not usual and that it hinges widely on a single project. Moreover, since the project is in West Africa, its execution does not necessarily reshape the situations in North and East/South Africa. What should happen, especially in West Africa, is a depletion in the need and opportunity for product imports.

Mr. Devakumar Edwin, Group Executive Director, Dangote Industries Limited, said that OPEC was rigth with its estimation and that all set to deliver the refinery on time.

The Dangote Group’s curently ongoing petrochemicals and refining project can meet 100 percent of the domestic demands of all liquid petroleum products like Gasoline, Diesel, Kerosene and Aviation Jet, thus leaving behind the excess for export in line with the OPEC expectation.Such huge amounts of PMS output from the Dangote Refinery would transform Nigeria from a petrol import-dependent country to an exporter of refined petroleum products.

Edwin mentioned that as part of the gigantic economic transformation project, Dangote is constructing the largest fertilizer Plant in West Africa with capacity to produce 3.0 million tonnes of Urea per year.