Dangote Petroleum Refinery is adding eight new tanks to expand its imported crude oil storage capacity.
Africa Report states that the refinery plans to boost its storage by 6.29 million barrels, equivalent to 1 billion liters.
The $20 billion refinery is stockpiling imported crude because local supplies remain unreliable.
Refinery officials highlighted that inadequate crude supply from NNPC has forced greater dependence on imports.
Building eight more tanks will raise the refinery’s crude storage capacity by 41.67%, reaching a total of 3.4 billion liters.
Devakumar Edwin, Dangote Industries’ Vice President for oil and gas, explained that importing crude instead of sourcing locally requires larger stockpiles.
Edwin added that they began constructing eight new crude tanks to store an extra billion liters, with four nearing completion.
The refinery now runs 20 crude storage tanks, each holding 120 million liters, totaling 2.4 billion liters.
Its tanks for refined products have a storage capacity of up to 2.34 billion liters.
Edwin emphasized that crude oil supply from NNPC to the refinery is still “very low.”
Although Nigeria is Africa’s largest oil producer, it depended on fuel imports until the Dangote refinery became operational last year.
Nigeria faces ongoing issues like underinvestment and frequent production disruptions from theft and pipeline vandalism.
These problems have consistently cost Nigeria its spot as Africa’s leading oil producer in recent years.