DANGOTE REFINERY RECEIVES FIRST CRUDE OIL SHIPMENT FROM AGBAMI

The Dangote Refinery, a mammoth $19 billion project in Nigeria, is finally poised to commence fuel production as the first crude shipment from Agbami arrives at the facility, marking a significant milestone for the country’s oil industry.

Quoting industry sources and tanker tracking data, S&P Global, in a report on its website, spglobal.com, said that the OTIS tanker, carrying a 950,000 barrel cargo of Nigeria’s Agbami crude, set sail on December 6 and is currently en route to Lekki, the nearest land port to Dangote’s offshore crude receiving terminal.

The tanker is expected to arrive on December 7 around 8pm, this shipment marks the initiation of crude supplies for the refinery’s operations.

The Suezmax tanker, chartered by the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC), symbolises the initial crude supply to Dangote’s state-of-the-art refinery as it gears up to initiate production, revealed a West African oil trader familiar with the matter, the S&P report said

Despite the refinery’s official completion in May, the lack of domestic crude feedstock had impeded oil product manufacturing. The NNPC, owning a 20% stake in the refinery, recently entered an agreement to supply 6 million barrels of crude oil as feedstock to the Dangote refinery in December, aiming to jumpstart operations.

Agbami, operated by Chevron, stands as one of Nigeria’s major deepwater developments, boasting a daily output of approximately 100,000 b/d in the central Niger Delta. Renowned for its light sweet crude qualities with specific gravity measuring 47.9 API and sulphur content of 0.04%, Agbami yields significant proportions of naphtha and kerosene.

Further shipments from various Nigerian offshore fields to the refinery have been chartered by NNPC, signifying the beginning of a series of scheduled crude supplies throughout this month, according to the oil trader.

The Dangote Refinery, situated on the outskirts of Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial hub, had faced recurrent delays since its announcement in 2013, despite substantial installation progress made in 2019