Aliko Dangote, president of the Dangote group, said that Dangote Petroleum’s refinery and petrochemistry (DPRP), the parent of his $ 20 billion refinery, was not designed to compete with the NNPC, which has traditionally controlled the importing and retail market of Nigeria.
He declared it during a courtesy visit to the Director General of the Group (GCEO) of NNPC LTD., Mr. Bashir Bayo Ojulari, at the NNPC Tours in Abuja on Thursday.
“There is no competition between us. We are not here to compete with NNPC LTD. NNPC is an integral part of our activities, and we are also part of the NNPC. This is an era of cooperation between the two organizations,” said Dangote, in a declaration signed by Friday.
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Dangote highlighted the importance of collaboration between its refinery and the NNPC, noting that they are not competitors but partners in the conduct of the Nigeria energy transformation program.
However, an analysis of the energy and economic expert Kelvin Emmanuel gave a new context to the declaration, claiming that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC) belonging to the State does not, in the first place, the ability to compete with the Dangote refinery.
Emmanuel argued that the Dangote refinery is currently the only installation in Nigeria which truly refines the premium engine spirits (PMS), also known as petrol.
Explaining on Brief Morning of Channels Television, Emmanuel dismantled that the own NNPC refineries, located in Kaduna, Warri and Port Harcourt, are now operational or refining essence, calling the story a facade built on the mixture, and not on real refining.
“I always said it, and I stick to it: the only refinery in Nigeria to produce PM is Dangote. Dangote is 44 million liters of PMS on a daily basis,” said Emmanuel.
“On the other hand, the NNPC does not refine the PMS-they only mix,” he added.
The illusion of the redesign of the refinery
Kelvin Emmanuel osted ostenally the government allegations to the Renaissance of the four main Nigeria State refineries – Port Harcourt (two units), Warri and Kaduna – calling for their alleged “window dressing” activity. According to him, what is described as refining is, at best, mixing operations involving imported naphtha and other components to imitate petrol production.
He explained that in places like Warri, although there is a catalytic reform unit, a critical component for the production of PMS, it is not functional. Without this, the refinery cannot convert Naphta into higher distillates such as PMS. This same limitation, he noted, also applies to Port Harcourt.
“You can produce Naphtha, but you cannot divide it into higher distillates like PM. The same applies to Port Harcourt,” said Emmanuel.
“What they did is that they go bankrupt with the refinery root, mix with Naphtha, condense and call it PMS,” he added.
NMDPRA data confirm the non-production
Falling his assertions with regulatory data, Emmanuel has referred to Nigerian Midstream and downstream from the Oil Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), which, according to him, shows that no PMS is currently produced by state refineries. The story of the government of rejuvenation, he said, fails to align with the operational realities on the ground.
He broke the refining capacities of the main refineries in Nigeria as follows:
- Head of Port Harcourt: 60,000 barrels per day (old unit), 150,000 BPD (new unit)
- Warri manager: 125,000 BPD
- Kaduna refinery: 110,000 b / d (50,000 and 60,000 b / d in two CDUs)
Despite these capacities, Emmanuel said that none of these installations actively brought in petrol, effectively excluding them as competitors in a sector where the Dangote refinery has already increased the production of PMS to 44 million liters per day.
“Refineries belonging to a government do not do what they are supposed to do,” he said.
He also listed modular refineries such as Arabel (Rivers State), Walter Smith, Dupont mainstream and Opac, each producing on a very small scale (ranging from 1,000 to 11,000 barrels per day), as unable to meet the demand of the country’s PMS.
Why NNPC cannot compete
By failing to fix or replace its moribund refining infrastructure, the NNPC has actually disadvantaged. With its historical dependence on importing and its strategy to mix fuel in progress (as opposed to complete spectrum refining), the State oil company challenges exorbitant and fluctuating FX rates.
In April 2025, the Dangote refinery reduced the ex-depot price of PMs to N835 per liter, marking its second price reduction in one week. This decision sent undulations to the market and forced the NNPC to respond with clean price reductions – N880 per liter in Lagos and N935 in Abuja. But the difference is not lost for analysts or petroleum marketing specialists.
The incapacity of the NNPC to go aside with Dangote is largely linked to the landing cost, which refers to the total cost of petrol in Nigeria, including international purchase, shipping, insurance, shipping costs and internal logistics. In November 2024, data showed that the average 30 -day average landing cost had climbed to N977 per liter. In December, he fell marginally at N970, and in cash transactions, he oscillated around N938 per liter.
This means that each liter of petrol brought by the NNPC costs nearly N970 or higher than the N970 before it even reaches the filling stations. When the same company then sells petrol to N880 or N935, the figures do not add up without supposing losses or absorption of the costs supported by the State.
Emmanuel did not stop at the performance of the refinery. It also targeted broader structural problems in the Nigeria oil sector, in particular the absence of a hydrocarbon accounting framework – a mechanism designed to follow and measure volumes and income from oil production in real time.
“I would say that the Nigerian government today does not have a precise estimate of the amount of crude oil that comes on the surface,” he said. “Nigeria is one of the few crude oil producing countries in the world without hydrocarbon accounting framework.”
Such an executive, he explained, would allow the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Petroleum Resources to independently verify the real volumes of crude oil produced, exported or used for local refining. The law on petroleum industry (PIA), in particular article 69, the fact via the mapping of the geographic information system (GIS) and the installation of meters in wells, aggregation pipes and pipelines.
“The hydrocarbon accounting framework is not only a spreadsheet,” said Emmanuel, stressing the need for technological infrastructure.
A question of $ 450 million
Emmanuel also cited the example of a private company authorized by the federal government and supplied with crude oil by the NNPC to raise $ 450 million in initial funding to rehabilitate a refinery – a plan that has finally collapsed. According to him, the approval of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) in 2021 to spend this amount in recovery maintenance could have been better used to build a brand new refinery.
This, he said, explains a long history of waste, corruption and strategic bad thinking in the Nigeria oil sector-which has eroded the ability of the NNPC to actually play in the refining space or to position itself as a competitor of the Dangote refinery.
