Africa's richest man Aliko Dangote's refinery runs at half capacity as exports fall

Dangote Petroleum Refinery is operating its main crude distillation unit at roughly half throughput after an equipment fault forced maintenance work, cutting seaborne exports of refined products to their lowest level in three months, according to commodity analytics firm Kpler.

Crude runs at the 650,000 barrel-a-day plant owned by Aliko Dangote have fallen to between 350,000 and 400,000 barrels a day since July 10, down from 600,000 to 650,000 through the preceding months. June throughput had approached 700,000 barrels a day, the refinery's expanded capacity after a 10 percent creep above its design rate.

Kpler has cut its forecast for July crude throughput to about 450,000 barrels a day, from 650,000 previously. The revision implies a shortfall of roughly 75,000 barrels a day of gasoline, 50,000 barrels a day of jet fuel and 40,000 barrels a day of gasoil against expected output.

A fault outside the usual trouble spot

The disruption traces to problems involving the Flue Gas Steam Generator, a piece of heat recovery equipment. Kpler noted that unlike previous outages at the plant, this one is not directly related to the residue fluid catalytic cracker, the unit that has caused most of the refinery's earlier interruptions, though it has constrained operations across the site.

The refinery has been running its crude distillation unit at about 50 percent throughput since July 10, with the 204,000 barrel-a-day cracker at roughly 55 percent utilisation, according to figures Kpler attributed to industry monitor IIR.

Even before the fault, the cracker had been limiting the plant. Kpler reported that constraints there had held back conversion efficiency and prevented the unit from reaching its rated capacity, though strong refining margins allowed the refinery to maximise crude processing and export the resulting fuel oil and crude bottoms.

The world was leaning on the plant

The timing carries weight beyond Nigeria. Since March, the refinery has become one of the most significant incremental suppliers of refined products into the Atlantic Basin, stepping up shipments as escalating tension across the Middle East tightened flows from Gulf producers. Jet fuel to Europe has been the standout trade.

The July slowdown removes that supply from an already strained market. Kpler pointed to reduced Russian refinery exports and constrained output and shipments from Middle East Gulf refineries as compounding factors, with tension around the Strait of Hormuz increasingly pointing toward a prolonged disruption.

Dangote's plant had, in effect, become a swing supplier of last resort for a market with few alternatives. Its unplanned absence is felt in European jet fuel differentials rather than only at Nigerian filling stations.

Repairs every six to ten weeks

Kpler expects the maintenance to finish in the final week of July, with the crude distillation unit returning to full rates within days and the cracker ramping to 80 or 90 percent by the first week of August. Runs should recover to between 650,000 and 675,000 barrels a day across August and September, supported by healthy margins.

The firm attached a clear caveat. Since the refinery started up, the cracker and associated units have gone through repeated maintenance cycles after every six to ten weeks of operation. Kpler described reliability as the key downside risk to sustaining high utilisation, a judgment that reframes the July outage as a recurring pattern rather than an isolated incident.

That assessment matters for what comes next. Dangote announced in October that he intends to lift capacity to 1.4 million barrels a day by 2029, which would make the plant the largest in the world, and has signed a $400 million agreement with a Chinese machinery supplier to accelerate the work. He also plans to take the refinery public later this year, a listing that would expose its operating record to outside scrutiny for the first time.

Domestic market feels it too

The output reduction has coincided with turbulence in Nigeria's downstream market. The refinery suspended naira-denominated truck loading for about a week and shifted to dollar pricing before resuming local currency sales on Wednesday at ₦1,215 a litre ($0.88), up 13.02 percent from ₦1,075 ($0.78). Ex-depot prices in Lagos had reached ₦1,275 ($0.92) during the suspension.

The refinery supplied about 90 percent of Nigeria's gasoline in May, according to the downstream regulator, which means any reduction in its runs passes quickly into domestic supply and pricing.

Dangote, whose fortune Forbes estimates at $28.5 billion, has not publicly commented on the maintenance work or the revised throughput figures. The refinery began operations in 2024 after eight years of construction.