Onome Amuge

Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, is plotting an ambitious second act for his $20 billion oil refinery, unveiling plans to sell a minority stake and double its capacity in a bid to create the world’s largest refining complex.

In an interview with S&P Global Platts, Dangote confirmed that the Dangote Petroleum Refinery will offer between 5 and 10 per cent of its shares on the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) within the next year. The proceeds, he said, will help finance an aggressive expansion plan that could see production rise from 650,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 1.4 million bpd, overtaking India’s Reliance Industries’ Jamnagar refinery as the largest refining operation on the planet.

“We don’t want to keep more than 65–70 per cent. Our business concept is going to change. Instead of being 100 percent Dangote-owned, we’ll have other partners,” Dangote said. 

The refinery, commissioned in 2023 and located within Lagos’ Lekki Free Zone, was built to transform Nigeria’s energy landscape by ending the country’s reliance on imported fuel. It already boasts the world’s largest single-train crude distillation unit and a purpose-built deepwater port designed to accommodate supertankers.

Simultaneously, Dangote plans to expand polypropylene production from 1 million to 1.5 million metric tonnes annually, alongside new petrochemical ventures focused on linear alkylbenzene and base oils, materials critical to detergents, lubricants, and industrial production.

To fund this new phase, Dangote Group is courting strategic investors from the Middle East, part of a pivot toward shared ownership and international collaboration. The billionaire said talks are ongoing with several regional energy and sovereign funds to co-finance both the refinery’s expansion and a new petrochemical complex in China.

“Partnership is now key. We cannot do everything alone. Collaboration will help drive the refinery’s next phase of growth,” Dangote told Platts. 

The outreach to Gulf investors comes just months after Dangote Group secured a $4 billion financing deal in August, an agreement that eased concerns over the refinery’s mounting debt load. But the company still faces multibillion-dollar capital requirements for its planned expansion and petrochemical diversification.

Dangote’s ambitions arrive at a time when the International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts a global surplus of refining capacity by 2030, led by expansions in China, India, and the Middle East. Yet the Nigerian industrialist insists Africa’s case is different.

“Most African governments will not have the capacity to build a refinery. In places where interest rates are 30 percent, the cost of funding is high. The infrastructure is zero. Projects like this are essential if the continent is to stop importing 90 per cent of its fuel,”he said.  Smaller regional projects like Angola’s Cabinda refinery or Niger’s Soraz plant are in Dangote’s words, “a drop in the ocean.”

The refinery’s path to stability, however, has not been without hurdles. In August, its residue fluid catalytic cracker (RFCC), a core unit for gasoline production, was shut down for a three-week turnaround, followed by another brief outage in September.

Vice President Devakumar Edwin, who oversees refinery operations, confirmed that the RFCC was restarted on October 7 and is ramping back up to full capacity. “We have resolved most, not all, but most of the problems,” Dangote acknowledged, adding that another maintenance window is being planned.