Until Alhaji Aliko Dangote ventured into refinery business, one never knew how fierce competition is in the sector.
Not just fierce – there are cabals ready to sabotage your dream no matter how big it is, as now revealed by President of Dangote Industries, Aliko Dangote, himself.
No wonder, pundits will think, Nigeria’s four refineries have become a pawn in the chess of negative bulls, since they are public balls that can easily be passed round, no thanks to the intricate corruption to which they are exposed.
Days after Dangote said this, stating how even international forces were trying to prevent his gigantic enterprise from coming on stream, the Vice President of Oil and Gas at Dangote Industries Limited (DIL), Devakumar Edwin, has also accused International Oil Companies (IOCs) in Nigeria of sabotaging the Dangote Oil Refinery and Petrochemicals.
According to him, Edwin the IOCs are intentionally obstructing the refinery’s efforts to purchase local crude.
At a training for Energy Editors, organised by the Dangote Group, he noted, “While the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) are trying their best to allocate the crude for us, the IOCs are deliberately and willfully frustrating our efforts to buy the local crude.
“It would be recalled that the NUPRC, recently met with crude oil producers as well as refinery owners in Nigeria, in a bid to ensure full adherence to Domestic Crude Oil Supply Obligations (DCSO), as enunciated under section 109(2) of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA). It seems that the IOCs’ objective is to ensure that our Petroleum Refinery fails.
“It Is either they are deliberately asking for ridiculous/humongous premium or, they simply state that crude is not available. At some point, we paid $6 over and above the market price
“This has forced us to reduce our output as well as import crude from countries as far as the US, increasing our cost of production.”
