Dr Billy Harry, the national president of the Petroleum Products Retail Outlets Owners Association of Nigeria (PETROAN), has denounced the Dangote Petroleum Refinery’s minimum cap of one million litres of automotive gas oil (AGO) fuel.
The company reportedly informed the marketers that the refinery can only provide them with a minimum of one million litres of diesel.
Harry stated over the phone with The Nation that the threshold is too expensive for most marketers to afford.
He said the banks are no longer helpful in this circumstance because they have declined to lend them money.
He said:
He, however, implored the refinery to consider industry stakeholders’ capabilities.
Harry stated that ports, barges, and other logistics for moving the product from the refinery to the depots are already set up, indicating readiness to equip the refinery with the necessary logistics.
He added that the Nigerian Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) has Petroleum Tanker Drivers (PTD) on staff, which has always guaranteed cordial working relationships.
He said that Nigeria spends $2.4 billion on the shipping of cargoes of petrol annually.
He added:
The pause, he claimed, will save the nation a great deal of money.
TimesNow.com.ng reported that Aliko Dangote, the richest man in Africa and chairman of the 650,000 bpd Dangote Refinery at Lekki, Lagos state, said no refining facility has been established in Africa in the past 35 years because the continent’s vast fuel imports have benefited many.
In an excerpt from an interview with CNN, Dangote said that even though he had built a $19 billion refinery, he would have reconsidered if he had known in advance how difficult it would be to construct a plant of that size on the continent.
He argued that foreign aid and investments would not build Africa, explaining that Africans would have to develop the continent on their own.
Source: TimesNow.com.ng
