Economist and energy sector analyst Kelvin Emmanuel has stated that the Dangote Refinery is currently the only facility in Nigeria genuinely producing Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), commonly referred to as petrol.
Emmanuel made the claim while speaking during the Morning Brief program on Channels Television on Monday.
He dismissed the government’s narrative around the rejuvenation of state-owned refineries, arguing that they are either non-functional or engaging in mere blending operations, not actual refining of PMS.
“I’ve always said it, and I stand by it: the only refinery in Nigeria producing PMS is Dangote. Dangote is doing 44 million liters of PMS on a daily basis,” he declared.
“In contrast, NNPC is not refining PMS – they are only blending,” he added.
“Warri has a catalytic reforming unit, but Warri’s catalytic reforming unit is not functional,” Emmanuel said.
“So you can’t actually refine PMS. You can produce naphtha, but you can’t break it into higher distillates like PMS. The same thing applies in Port Harcourt.”
He added that data from the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) supports his claims, showing that the state-run refineries are not producing petrol.
“What they were doing was they barge C5 raciness to the refinery, blend with NAFTA, condense it and call it PMS,” Emmanuel explained.
Refineries Not Working as Claimed
Emmanuel outlined the production capacities of Nigeria’s major refineries – Port Harcourt (60,000 and 150,000 barrels per day in the old and new units, respectively), Warri (125,000), and Kaduna (110,000) – but insisted none of them is actively refining PMS.
He noted that Kaduna Refinery has two Crude Distillation Units (CDUs), CDU1 and CDU2, with capacities of 50,000 and 60,000 barrels per day, respectively. Despite this, refining remains at a standstill.
“The government-owned refineries are not doing what they are supposed to do,” he stated. “There’s Arabel in River State, there is Walter Smith, there is DuPont Mainstream, there’s OPAC. Those are modular refineries, you know, small refineries, 11,000, 5,000 here, 1,000 here, 2,500 here.”
Hydrocarbon Accounting Framework Lacking
Beyond refining capacity, Emmanuel criticized the federal government for lacking a proper hydrocarbon accounting framework. This, he argued, has led to a gross underestimation – or outright misreporting – of crude oil production volumes and revenue allocation.
“I’ll say that the Nigerian government today does not have an accurate estimate of the amount of crude oil that comes to surface,” he said. “Nigeria is one of the few crude oil-producing countries in the world without a hydrocarbon accounting framework.”
He explained that such a framework would allow agencies like the Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Petroleum Resources to independently verify production volumes and government entitlements in real-time.
“The hydrocarbon accounting framework is not just a spreadsheet. Section 69 of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) requires a proper grid system, GIS mapping for onshore acreages, and metering of wellheads, aggregation pipes, and transmission pipelines,” Emmanuel said.
Emmanuel referenced the controversial $450 million raised by a firm licensed to operate in Nigeria, which was given crude oil by the NNPC as an upfront payment to fund refinery maintenance.
He questioned the logic behind investing heavily in turnaround maintenance rather than building a new refinery altogether.
According to him, the money approved by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) in 2021 for turnaround maintenance was enough to build a brand-new refinery.
What you should know
The Dangote Refinery – the largest in Africa – started importing crude oil abroad last year after the NNPCL failed to supply it with sufficient crude oil for its operations, as reported by Nairametrics.
- In November 2024, Aliko Dangote, President of Dangote Group, urged collaboration with local refineries to meet Nigeria’s daily petrol demand.
- The Dangote Petroleum Refinery has recently exported two jet fuel cargoes to Saudi Aramco, the national oil company of Saudi Arabia and the world’s largest oil producer.
