The Dangote Refinery and Petrochemicals has promised to expand plant operations following the appointment of David Bird, the former head of Oman’s Duqm refinery, as the first chief executive officer of its petroleum and petrochemicals business.
This is even as Dangote said, it strives to overcome production challenges and advance its next wave of expansion.
Effective July 2025, David Bird stepped in as CEO of the Dangote Group’s fuels and petrochemicals business. Last year, the company commissioned the world’s largest single-train refinery.
Bird said his focus at Dangote will involve advancing the group’s footprint beyond the Nigerian market and across Africa.
As CEO of the refining business, he will be responsible for ensuring maximum output and efficiency for the refinery, and aims to make the group a leader in the global market, he said in a LinkedIn update.
The appointment comes after a string of unit upsets and ‘design issues’ that have stalled the ramp-up process of the 650,000-b/d refinery, while its leadership has called out a hostile business environment for challenging its operations.
Since it was commissioned in January 2024, Dangote has quickly grown its market share in the Nigerian fuel sector, displacing large volumes of gasoline imports that the country once relied on. However, Aliko Dangote has railed against ‘rent-seeking’ trade partners and substandard fuel imports for straining the business.
In a previous interview with Platts, Bird emphasised a trading-led approach to achieve a competitive edge in the refining sector, focusing on high utilisation rates, efficiency and feedstock flexibility.
His approach aligns with a recent shift from the Dangote complex to process a broader range of crude grades, partially spurred by the limited availability of the Nigerian oil it was designed to process.
Dangote Group founder Aliko Dangote will remain chairman of the refining business and CEO of the wider conglomerate, which is also active in cement, fertilisers and sugar refining.
The business is expected to tap Bird’s experience expanding the Duqm refinery and diversifying its crude slate as CEO of OQ8, a role he adopted months before the Omani complex began its first test runs in 2023.
However, he said, the Nigerian refinery is still obliged to sell fixed volumes of its oil products into the domestic crude market under a naira-based trade agreement with the Nigerian National Petroleum Company, a 7.2 per cent stakeholder in the business.
As the Dangote Group eyes its next wave of growth, it plans to expand the capacity of the Lagos refinery to 700,000 b/d, build out port infrastructure and establish foreign storage assets in Namibia and other countries. In August, it is set to roll out its own distribution business with a fleet of 4,000 CNG-powered trucks.
Dangote Group officials have also shared ambitions to list the refining business on the London and Lagos stock exchanges, and Aliko Dangote reiterated plans to take the company public on July 22.
After years of setbacks and budget challenges, the speed of the refinery’s ramp-up in 2024 caught many analysts by surprise, and the complex quickly began exerting pressure on global oil benchmarks as it began exporting its products.
Speaking to Platts earlier in July, a Dangote executive said the RFCC was running at 85 per cent. He denied reports that the company will undergo a planned turnaround on the unit in December.
According to S&P Global Commodities at Sea data, Nigeria exported some 220,000 b/d of petroleum products in July 2025, when outages at NNPC facilities made Dangote the country’s only active refiner.
The complex exported 30,000 b/d of residual fuel, a refining byproduct that would normally be kept on site for further processing in the RFCC under normal operations. Exports continue to be dominated by jet fuel, which accounted for 45 per cent of total shipments, and gasoil, with a 24 per cent share.
