Petrol Marketers Tell Tinubu Our Diesel Is Too Cheap - Dangote Refinery

DANGOTE NETURE has said that it is selling about 29 diesel oils per day from the support of local oil products.

Dangote Petroleum's Oil Refinery stated that Nigeria's petroleum marketing specialists appealed to Suzu's president and a decline in diesel prices up to 900 per liter has a negative effect on business. This was revealed by the Vice Chairman of Dangote Industries Limited (DIL), Mr. Devakumar Edwin, who spoke at a Twitter Spaces session hosted by Nairametrics on Wednesday, September 11, 2024.

Recall that Dangote Refinery began producing diesel and Jet A1 a few months ago at its facility in Lekki Free Zone, Lagos. Since entering the market, there has been a significant drop in diesel prices from almost 2,000 to less than 1,000 ₦.

However, Edwin said that development had not gone well with local oil marketing specialists who wrote to President Tinubu to deposit their dissatisfaction. “Petroleum marketers in Nigeria have written to President Bola Tinubu complaining that the prices of local refineries, which have dropped from N1,200 to N1,000 and then to N900 per litre, are negatively impacting their businesses,” he said. Edwin also touched on some of the challenges facing the Dangote Refinery and their impact on fuel supply and prices in Nigeria. He said the Dangote refinery was struggling to sell about 29 diesel tankers per day due to low levels of support from local petroleum product importers.

"Due to low support from local petroleum product importers, the refinery is exporting most of its diesel and aviation fuel," he said. The DIL chief said output from the Dangote refinery would be exported unless the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and other local oil traders cooperated.

"We export aviation fuel, we also produce kerosene, we also produce diesel but we started producing PMS from yesterday. So it was the last step. The only thing now left out is petrochemistry. "So the good news for the country is that we have started producing PMS in our refinery," he told a radio programme.

On whether the gasoline would be sold locally, Edwin stressed that there was unity among local distributors not to take up Dangote refinery's products, saying if the trend continued, the company would be forced to sell the fuel to other countries. By the way, I explained how to grow our products in Japan with a kind of blockade. The merchant tried to block (this), but now exported petroleum products. PMS, we are ready to pump as much as we can in the country.

“But if the traders or NNPC do not buy the product, we will obviously have to export the PMS like we do with jets and diesel engines,” he said.