Ongoing modification at the Dangote refinery is expected to expand the refinery’s output to 700,000 barrels per day.
The company is expanding the plant capacity by an additional 50, 000 barrels a day before the end of 2025.
The President of the Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote said the modification would result in moving the plant capacity from 650,000 barrels per day to 700,000 barrels per day.
Dangote informed visitors to the plant that the upgrade, which is to add another 50,000bpd to the facility’s nameplate capacity, is expected to end in the fourth quarter of this year.
He explained that the refinery could not reach 100 per cent capacity this year due to the modifications going on and expressed confidence that the modifications would scale up the oil refinery, adding that the Residue Fluid Catalytic Cracking (RFCC) unit is operating at 85 per cent of its capacity as of July 2025.
The RFCC is a chemical process used in petroleum refineries to convert heavy residue feedstocks into more valuable, lighter products such as gasoline, liquefied petroleum gas, and diesel.
“Our RFCC is at 85 per cent. We are not up to 100 per cent because there are some modifications that we are doing. It will finish by the end of the year, and we believe we will get to 700,000 bpd, not even 650,000, because all the other components that we have and all the other departments have all (reached 100 per cent). Some are even doing up to 145 per cent. So, we’ve done very well in that area,” Dangote said
He disclosed that the refinery bought 19 million barrels of crude from the United States between June and July this year and that the United States supplies about 55 per cent of its crude needs, having bought 10 million barrels in early July.
“As a company, we bought 10 million barrels of crude this month. So, 10 million barrels this month means that at the capacity we are, it’s about 55 per cent coming from the US,” he said.
He recalled how he decided to build the $20 billion refinery to make Nigeria and Africa self-sufficient in energy security and the fact that his desire to buy the government-owned refineries was aborted by the late former President Umar Yar’adua in 2007.
