The Dangote Petroleum Refinery is building eight new storage tanks with a combined capacity to hold 6.3 million barrels of crude oil to store imported crude.
According to an exclusive report by Africa Report, the 650,000-barrel-a-day capacity refinery struggles to get an adequate local supply of crude, hence it is increasing its crude import this year.
The Vice president for oil and gas at Dangote Industries Ltd, Devakumar Edwin, said crude supply from the Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) is insufficient.
Edwin, who noted that the refinery currently has 20 crude storage tanks with a capacity of 120 million litres each, told Africa Report that four of the new eight tanks being built are almost completed.
“So we have started building eight additional crude tanks to hold a billion litres, over and above our original storage capacity,” he said.
The Dangote Refinery started importing crude oil abroad last year after NNPCL failed to supply it with sufficient crude oil for its operations.
Tanker-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg show that the Dangote Refinery got shipments of imported crude up to 358,000 barrels per day in December 2024.
The eight new tanks have a total capacity of 6.3 million barrels, which is equivalent to one billion litres of storage. According to the report, the additional storage expands the facility’s overall capacity to store crude by about 41%.
Naijaonpoint reported that the Dangote refinery retained 13% of Nigeria’s crude oil exports as domestic supply in 2024, while also contributing to a boost in Nigeria’s crude imports.
Reuters reported that crude supplies to the Dangote refinery raised Nigeria’s domestic share of oil exports from 2 percent in 2023 and slightly cut the country’s exports to Europe.
Nigeria imported 47,000 barrels per day of US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil in 2024 with Dangote refinery taking a substantial share of the imports.
President Bola Tinubu has pledged to increase Nigeria’s crude oil production by about 1 million barrels per day and reduce dependency on crude imports. It is not clear if Dangote’s demands will be met by this proposed rise in output.
In addition to domestic supplies, the Dangote refinery is exporting refined petroleum products to various other countries including Cameroon, Angola, Ghana, and South Africa in Africa, and some European countries.