The Chairman of the Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote has lashed out at the International Oil Companies, IOC, for deliberately carrying out actions intended to frustrate the activities of the Dangote Refinery.
In a recent interview with CNN, President of Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, said that the IOC have refused to comply with the mandate, adding that they are not selling crude oil to his refinery for processing.
“The NNPC is doing its best, but some of the IOCs are struggling to give us crude. Everybody is used to exporting and nobody wants to stop exporting”, Dangote bemoaned.
Vice President of Oil and Gas at Dangote Industries Limited (DIL), Devakumar Edwin, also denounced the International Oil Companies (IOCs) operating in Nigeria for engaging in activities intended to undermine the Dangote Oil Refinery and Petrochemicals.
Edwin reportedly alleged that the IOCs are deliberately sabotaging the refinery’s efforts to purchase local crude by increasing premium prices above market rates, thereby forcing the refinery to import crude from distant countries like the United States, leading to significantly higher costs.
“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”, Edwin said.
The Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), states clearly that the international oil companies are expected to meet local demands by supplying crude oil to refineries in the country before exporting.
Recall that this Act, which was signed by the administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari, was recently reinstated by the NUPRC.
According to the commission, IOCs are mandated to sell first to local refineries before exporting to foreign countries.