Dangote refinery will receive its first cargo of crude in the next two weeks and will begin producing up to 370,000 bpd of diesel and jet fuel from October.

Dangote Group Executive Director, Devakumar Edwin, made the disclosure in an exclusive interview with  S&P Global Commodity Insights.

The  $19.5 billion refinery, which was commissioned by former President Muhammadu Buhari in May, was scheduled to come on stream in August, but failed.

Dangote refinery is 650,000 bpd single train capacity refinery. At its full planned capacity, it is expected to make Nigeria   self-sufficient in fuels and with the Nigerian National Petroleum Company’s (NNPC) Limited 445,000 bpd refineries set to come on stream, Nigeria will become a net exporter of petroleum products.

Edwin informed that the refinery will launch in phases, beginning with 350,000-370,000 bpd of diesel and jet fuel by October, when the crude distillation unit, sulfur block and hydrogen plant should be online.

According to him,  the refinery will start the phased ramp-up to 650,000 bpd, on November 30, around half of it petrol, the key area of Nigerian fuel demand.

S&P Global analysts predict the refinery will not hit full operating capacity until mid-2025, according to a recent note, with further delays still possible. Still, forecasts from S&P Global suggest Nigerian petrol production will exceed imports until the 2040s as a result of the refinery.

Edwin said NNPC Limited, which has 20 percent stake in the refinery cannot supply the refinery until November. This means that Dangote is buying oil from trading houses for now until November when it will run exclusively on Nigerian crude. He said that Vitol and Trafigura recently carried out inspections of the plant.

“At the last minute [NNPC] said, ‘We have actually committed our crude on forward basis to someone else’, so immediately they don’t have the crude,” he said.

For over two decades, Nigeria has  been importing almost all the petroleum products consumed in the country, due to the sorry state of state-owned  refineries located in Kaduna, Port Harcourt and Warri. These refineries have been performing abysmally due to years of neglect, mismanagement and pillage, leading to the country wasting billions of naira yearly on petrol importation.