Is firms upcoming refinery a solution to fuel crisis?

yinka ogunlami

March 31, 2016 3:18 PM

Mansur Ahmed, Executive Director, Stakeholder Management and Corporate Communications, Dangote Group have stated that soon Nigeria will transform from an oil importing country to an exporting one.

Aliko Dangote, the Chairman of Dangote Industries Limited

He stated that Dangote was building the largest single refinery in the world and that the firm plans to produce petrochemical products.

“That plant itself is the largest single refinery plant anywhere in the world. In addition to the refinery, we are also going to produce some petrochemical products from the same complex. These are polyethylene and polypropylene,” Ahmed told journalists in Abuja.

“One would prefer if it was deregulated so that we know that we are playing in the open market. The key issue is that if I buy crude, whether from Nigeria or anywhere else, I buy at an international price. If I produce a product and want to sell, I should sell that product at an international price.

“So, I will not be affected by the decision of local pricing; it is on that concept that we went into refining. We expect that we will buy our input, especially crude, for international market price, and that when we produce products, we will sell those products at international prices.

“The refining industry is a global industry; if you use those international benchmarks, you shouldn’t really worry about the price. It is about time Nigeria completely deregulated the downstream industry. The kind of reason that has compelled the government to fix petroleum product prices has not been tenable.”

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