The Dangote Petroleum Refinery has started exporting refined petroleum products to some West African countries.
The report by Punch newspaper on Wednesday said that the mega-refinery’s operations could soon potentially shake up regional petroleum products markets.
According to the report, which quoted data sourced from Vortexa, Kpler, Precise Intelligence, port report and ship-tracking platform by Bloomberg on Tuesday, stated that a tanker has hauled a shipment of petrol from the Dangote Petroleum Refinery to waters off the coast of Togo.
The report said a CL Jane Austen recently loaded over 300,000 barrels from Dangote and sailed west.
It recalled that last month, the Chairman of the Ghana National Petroleum Authority, Mr. Mustapha Abdul-Hamid, said the country was considering buying petroleum products from the Dangote Refinery to help the country cut more expensive exports from Europe which cost the country about $400m monthly.
It added that the Chairman of NPA, Ghana, who spoke at the OTL Africa Downstream Oil Conference in Lagos, said that importing from Nigeria rather than Europe would reduce the prices of other goods and services by removing freight costs.
“If the refinery reaches 650,000bpd a day capacity, all that volume cannot be consumed by Nigeria alone, so instead of us importing as we do right now from Rotterdam, it will be much easier for us to import from Nigeria and I believe that will bring down our prices,” Hamid said.
Meanwhile, two weeks ago an official of the refinery had hinted that the refinery was set to begin fuel exports to South Africa, Angola, and Namibia.
He added that four other African countries – Niger Republic, Chad, Burkina Faso, and Central Africa Republic – had also started negotiations with the refinery.
GIK/APA