World’s Top Oil Traders Buy Up Fuel From Africa’s Biggest Refinery

The large commodity trading firms Vitol and Trafigura, as well as supermajor BP, are the biggest and dominant buyers of fuels lifted from the Dangote refinery in Nigeria, Africa’s newest and largest crude processing facility, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, citing data from Geneva-based oil and gas analytics firm Precise Intelligence.

The Dangote refinery began the production of fuels in January 2024, marking the start-up of the plant that has seen years of delays. The plant began to ramp up processing rates in the middle of this year and has yet to reach its huge capacity to process as much as 650,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude.

At full capacity, the refinery, owned by the Dangote Group of Africa’s richest person, Aliko Dangote, is expected to meet 100% of Nigeria’s demand for all refined petroleum products. So far, Nigeria, the biggest oil producer in Africa, has been importing all of the fuel it consumes.

The refinery will also have a surplus of each of the products for export. It has yet to reach full capacity, expected at some point next year.

So far, most of the refinery’s shipments of fuel have been picked up by the three major oil traders—the world’s largest independent oil trader, Vitol Group, commodity trading giant Trafigura, and integrated oil and gas major BP, according to Precise Intelligence’s data.

The figures also showed that the Dangote refinery has loaded nearly 45 million barrels of fuel since it began operations earlier this year. Diesel and fuel oil have dominated loadings as they have accounted for 60% of all shipments.

Aliko Dangote has discussed crude supply to the refinery and fuel supply to Nigeria with Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu.

In October, the Dangote refinery received four cargoes from state oil firm NNPC under a sale agreement to deliver crude which the refinery will pay in naira, the local currency, Nigerian media reported at the time.