Dangote group head Aliko Dangote at the site of the refinery in 2016
Nigeria’s Dangote refinery startup in doubt
The market is growing increasingly pessimistic about the potential timeline for the ‘game-changing’ West African refinery project
Nigeria’s lack of a functioning domestic refining sector has long been something between a running joke and an acute source of national embarrassment. Formerly state-owned NNPC’s elderly refinery assets seem to be in a perennial state of refurbishment, and previous expansion plans and new developments have consistently failed to materialise—much like other large infrastructure schemes in the corruption-plagued nation. At the same time, the government’s politically essential fuel subsidy programme—which is run through NNPC—swallows up significant volumes of the country’s sizeable crude export revenues, a situation that has become particularly acute in the current price environment. Much of th
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