The Dangote Petroleum Refinery has begun the export of refined petroleum products to neighbouring West African countries, a sign to traders that the mega-refinery’s operations could soon potentially shake up regional fuel markets.
A Bloomberg report on Tuesday, quoting data sourced from Vortexa, Kpler, Precise Intelligence, a port report, and a ship-tracking platform, said a tanker had hauled a shipment of gasoline from the Dangote Petroleum Refinery to waters off the coast of Togo, a neighbouring West African country.
The report said a CL Jane Austen recently loaded more than 300,000 barrels from Dangote and sailed west.
Recall that last month, the chairman of the Ghana National Petroleum Authority, Mustapha Abdul-Hamid, said the country is considering buying petroleum products from the Dangote refinery to help cut more expensive exports from Europe, which cost the country about $400m monthly.
The chairman of NPA, Ghana, who spoke at the OTL Africa Downstream Oil Conference in Lagos, said importing from Nigeria rather than Europe would reduce the prices of other goods and services by removing freight costs.
“If the refinery reaches 650,000bpd a day capacity, all that volume cannot be consumed by Nigeria alone, so instead of us importing as we do right now from Rotterdam, it will be much easier for us to import from Nigeria and I believe that will bring down our prices,” Hamid said.
Four other African countries – Niger Republic, Chad, Burkina Faso, and Central Africa Republic – had also started negotiations with the refinery.
The refinery last month shipped its first seaborne gasoline cargo to the nearby commercial hub of Lagos.
Whether large amounts of Dangote’s gasoline output end up being exported remains to be seen.
