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Africa's largest crude producer, shipped 55.39 million barrels of oil out of the country in January and February, even as the billionaire industrialist's 650,000-barrel-per-day Dangote Petroleum Refinery kept hunting for the feedstock it needs to run at full tilt.
Central Bank of Nigeria data show the country exported 31.31 million barrels in January and 24.08 million in February. Production averaged 1.46 million barrels a day in January and slid to 1.31 million in February. Only 26.55 million barrels stayed home over those two months, a thin cushion for a refinery the size of Dangote's.
The arithmetic does not flatter Abuja. The $20 billion Dangote Petroleum Refinery needs roughly 19.77 million barrels a month to run flat out. Between October and mid-March, it received 29.21 million barrels against the 108.74 million it required, a supply performance of about 26.9 percent. That left a shortfall of 79.53 million barrels, and it forced Dangote to source crude from international traders at market prices plus a premium.
The refinery has argued that the Petroleum Industry Act bars the export of crude before domestic demand is met. In a statement, the company said Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited was delivering five cargoes a month, well below the 13 it needs, and that upstream producers were simply not supplying as the law requires. Dangote has made that argument before, but the fresh export data give him new ammunition.
NNPC has now doubled its deliveries. Dangote told Bloomberg the refinery received 10 cargoes in March, six paid for in naira and four in dollars. It is still short of the refinery's monthly threshold, but it is the clearest signal yet that the state oil firm is trying to plug the gap.
Sources inside NNPC told Punch that the firm had already front-sold some of its output, creating a distortion it is now working to unwind through its global trading network. Those third-party cargoes, the sources said, land at international prices rather than the discounted rates some local stakeholders want.
The market pressure is compounding. With the Iran-US war disrupting global oil supply, Dangote pushed its petrol pump price above 1,300 naira per liter before trimming it to the current 1,250. Eche Idoko, publicity secretary of the Crude Oil Refiners Association of Nigeria, said modular refineries cannot turn a profit without consistent feedstock and warned that demand for local crude will only grow as national output recovers.
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