By Adedapo Adesanya
Mr Aliko Dangote, the owner of the Lagos-based refinery, says his $20 billion facility will show Nigeria’s true daily petrol consumption.
The exact volume of Nigeria’s daily consumption of petrol has been a subject of debate and sometimes controversy, with different regulators in the value chain quoting different figures.
However, with the facility set to be the major source of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), also known as petrol, he believes there will be adequate mechanisms to track the development.
Speaking at a conference in Lagos to roll out the product on Tuesday, the business tycoon said, “There is a lot of round-tripping where people now do documentation and the fuel does not come into Nigeria, and this is a fact.
“Right now, as we have this refinery working, it will show the true consumption of Nigeria.
“We can track every single loaded truck and we will try as much as possible to track the loaded ships. Trucks, we can tell you where they are just as now some of the products that we do, we can tell you exactly the consumption pattern.”
The refinery owner said the product will be on the market as soon as his company finalises modalities with the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited.
Mr Dangote also assured Nigerians that the petrol from its 650,000 barrels per day facility will be of good quality.
“Nigerians are now going to have good petrol while the engines of your vehicles will last longer. You will not be having an engine issue, which a lot of us were having. It won’t happen at all.”
“The quality here will match that of anywhere in the world; US, America, we will make sure that nobody will beat us in terms of quality,” Mr Dangote said.
The tycoon, who is now Africa’s second-richest man, said the refinery will help restore affected industries in the country, particularly those heavily reliant on importation.
“We will help to restore industry and manufacturing. We will begin real import substitution, which is what we have, you know, saving foreign exchange, earning foreign exchange, which will stabilise the naira, and it will also help bring down inflation and cost of living,” he stated.
Modupe Gbadeyanka