David Bird, chief executive officer (CEO) of Dangote
refinery, says the refiner has a nameplate capacity of 650,000 barrels per day
(bpd) and will soon ramp up production to 700,000 bpd.
On October 26, 2025, Aliko Dangote, the founder of Dangote
Group, said the refinery was expanding its production capacity from 650,000 bpd
to 1.4 million bpd within three years.
Speaking during a news conference on Wednesday, Bird said
the refinery has more than enough fuel, production, and capacity to meet
demand.
He said as a result, the refinery can produce more than 75
million litres of petrol per day, adding that the refiner will now focus more
on production output rather than crude rate.
“However, our nameplate capacity is 650,000 barrels a day
and right now we’re also transitioning from project insurance to operations
insurance,” Bird said.
“So from an insurance perspective I have to be careful with
my language. We will be 650,000 barrels a day.
“However, we believe there is design margin to get to
700,000 barrels a day with minor modifications, as Mr Edwin mentioned, and in a
very managed process of management of change, we will look to do the
performance test run to get to 700,000 barrels a day.”
He reiterated that for insurance purposes, the refinery is
rated at 650,000 bpd and will remain so until it proves — through rigorous
management of change — that it can re-rate its nameplate capacity.
“In my prior role, we had a 235,000 bpd refinery. We took it
to 255,000 bpd only 10 months after start-up. It’s very normal in our industry.
Again, it’s all about utilisation,” Bird said.
He said the refinery aims to fully sweat its assets and
extract every last bit of capacity from them.
‘DANGOTE REFINERY’S POLYPROPYLENE PRODUCTION REDUCED
IMPORTATION’
The CEO said polypropylene production has already displaced
some imports.
He added that petrochemicals are a key focus for the
refinery, as it upgrades low-value gas into high-value finished products.
“So, the polypropylene unit was commissioned last year and
ramped up. We have two trains,” Bird said.
“It displaced some of the imports. Now when we took a
maintenance, what we call a maintenance pit stop.
“The polypropylene unit is fed from the cat cracker. But the
cat cracker has been under maintenance, which is very normal after 18 months —
two years of operation. We commissioned that unit in September 2024.
“So we’ve taken what we call a pit stop. And that’s been a
period of huge activity to gather all of the scope, iron out all of the bugs,
and iron out all of the teething issues.”
However, he said on February 3, the refinery commenced
restarting its catalytic cracker unit.
Consequently, Bird said the unit will feed the
“polypropylene unit and we expect full polypropylene production within the
first half of this month”.
He said the refinery will ramp up to a full 800,000 tonnes
per year of production in the first half of February.
On polypropylene exports, Bird added that, similar to fuels, the output will displace some imports.
“We’ve put a lot of focus on our domestic marketing. But we
have also signed a long-term agreement with an international marketer for
building up some of the export markets, for any export volumes that we have
available,” he said.
However, Bird said the refinery’s priority has always been,
and will continue to be, maximising domestic offtake of polypropylene
production.
Click to signup for FREE news updates, latest information and hottest gists everyday
Advertise on NigerianEye.com to reach thousands of our daily users
No comments
Post a Comment
Kindly drop a comment below.
(Comments are moderated. Clean comments will be approved immediately)
Advert Enquires - Reach out to us at NigerianEye@gmail.com