Nigeria’s Dangote refinery mulls first fuel cargo export

Nigeria’s Dangote refinery has issued notice to sell two fuel cargoes for export, Reuters reports.

This is the first from the newly commissioned 650,000 barrels per day refinery.

According to the News Agency, at least one refiner said they had been offered the cargo by Trafigura without elaborating further.

The second tender is for about 60,000 tonnes of naphtha, three other sources said. Two of them added that the tender closes on February 15. Loading details were not immediately available.

The two fuels on offer are typical products of running light sweet crude through a crude distillation unit (CDU) in a refinery without further upgrading capacity. It is expected to take months for upgraded units to be brought online, experts have said.

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Meanwhile, sources also said, Dangote Refinery was preparing to deliver its first fuel cargoes to the domestic market within weeks.

The development comes as Dangote Refinery named members of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, IPMAN, Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria, MOMAN and the Depot and Petroleum Products Marketers Association of Nigeria, DAPPMAN, as official distributors of its petroleum products.

Newspot recalls that last month the refinery announced the commencement of production after receiving 6,000,000 barrels of crude from Nigerian National Petroleum Company Company Limited and other oil companies.

However, the company purchased US oil and is expected to receive 2 million barrels of U.S. WTI Midland in early March.

Africa’s largest refinery was built on a peninsula on the outskirts of the commercial capital Lagos by the continent’s richest man Aliko Dangote.