Foreign Media and Dangote Refinery: Honest Reportage or Sponsored Mischief?

Reading few reports by some of the most prominent western news agencies, my curiosity was immediately provoked about the genuineness of these foreign media reportage of Nigeria’s elite Dangote Refinery coming onstream full capacity.

Hear them: “Nigeria’s Dangote Refinery is going to cause a splash in a tight oil market. Once the site starts churning out gasoline, it will transform fuel markets in the region and upend long-established trade flows, particularly in Europe, where Nigeria currently purchases much of its supplies. What’s more, Europe will now have to compete with Nigeria to buy crude oil on a very tight global market, indicating significant disruption to come.”

Agreed that our massive Dangote refinery will establish Nigeria as “a major influencer and a juggernaut,” but why should anybody trumpet the coming onstream of the plant as a potential disruptor for Europe?

On the surface it looks very much like an honest analysis/reportage but right below the surface, it’s obvious there is mischief intended and deliberately too.

One of such reports had it that “Nigeria’s oil production is declining, even as the country prepares to launch the massive Dangote Refinery, which will have a capacity of 650,000 barrels per day.

“The Dangote Refinery faces challenges securing enough crude oil feedstock, as it aims to reduce Nigeria’s reliance on imported fuel and potentially disrupt European markets.”

All these reports that sounds the same, what do they really want to achieve? Do they really mean to praise/commend and market Dangote Refinery or pitch the yet-to-fully-come- onstream elite project against European refiners?

An earlier report by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries(OPEC) had also stated that Nigeria’s Dangote Refinery could significantly disrupt Europe’s oil industry, reshaping global fuel supply dynamics.”

According to OPEC’s June 2024 Oil Market Report, the supply of diesel and jet fuel from the Dangote Refinery is poised to disrupt Europe’s oil and gas sector, especially in Northwest Europe (NWE), a region heavily reliant on refined petroleum imports.

“This shift comes at a critical time for Europe, which has been grappling with supply challenges following the European Union’s ban on Russian diesel imports.

“With Europe being one of the world’s largest purchasers of refined petroleum products, the entry of the Dangote Refinery into this market is expected to have far-reaching consequences.”

It stated further “Europe is one of the world’s largest purchasers of refined petroleum products and relied on imports from Asia and the US after the European Union banned the use of Russian diesel in the bloc.”

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The mega-refinery could therefore tighten the light, sweet crude market. “It’s diet is WTI and the lighter Nigerian [crudes], so if you were chasing those barrels you’d probably feel it quite keenly,” a West African crude trader told Commodity Insights. “Once they get to 650,000 b/d without any WTI Midland, ‘severely disrupted’ [will be] the headline.”

Without mincing words, the reports are all sounding what at best is a wakeup call to European refiners and other downstream interests in the West to be alert to the obvious threat coming from Nigeria’s 650,000 barrels per stream day Dangote Refinery.

Those who don’t know may ask, “so why is that a problem to Dangote’s smooth operations?

Now this is it: these reports which obviously smells like pure propaganda campaign which actually may not even be coming from Europe (western) itself, may deliberately be setting up Western European refiners and other downstream interests to start a covert fight with the Nigerian giant refiner.

The series of reports which obviously came from one original copy by an Agency as referenced by almost all the morphs cannot mean well for Dangote and Nigeria as the opening tones signposts.

Majority, if not all, of the reports started with painting terrible pictures of the Nigerian oil industry- Upstream and Downstream: “Western oil companies like Shell, Exxon Mobil, Eni’s Nigerian Agip, and Norway’s Equinor have pulled out of Nigeria due to operational challenges and instability.

“The weakening of Nigeria’s oil production capacity also comes at a time that the nation is preparing to bring the massive Dangote refinery online. Once the plant is up and running at full capacity, Dangote will be able to process 650,000 barrels of crude oil a day, making it competitive with the United States’ largest refineries and over 50 percent bigger than the largest refinery in Europe.”

Even the western transnational oil companies operating in Nigeria seem to also be pushing the same agenda of ensuring that the Nigerian elite Dangote Refinery fails or at best do not function optimally. It is either they are deliberately asking for ridiculous/humongous premium for crudes produced in Nigeria or, they simply state that crude is not available to give Dangote. The refinery had to pay $6 per barrel above the market price at one point.

It appears that the objective of the IOCs  and their home countries is to ensure that Nigeria remains a country which exports crude oil and imports refined petroleum products.

Foreign multinational companies operating in the country have been serially accused of “plotting” to bankrupt the refinery as part of the bigger agenda making the refinery struggle to exist optimally and profitably.

Recall that in a heart-renthrening tweet, the Nigerian-born investigative and undercover journalist, David Hundeyin, recently exposed how he was approached by a London-based NGO headed by Sam Geall, an Oxford professor and allegedly funded by several American intelligence fronts such as Ford Foundation and ClimateWorks (which is blacklisted in India for funding organisations working against India’s national interest).

For whatever reason, this “interest” is now quietly mobilising a resistance campaign against what it describes as “Nigeria’s first refinery.”

“Apparently, the status quo of Africa’s largest oil producer having no functioning oil refinery to beneficiate its own oil was not a problem for Dialogue Earth and the American CIA fronts who fund it. The human poverty caused by exporting this raw material and importing refined fuel was not bad for the environment. Also, the fact of European refiners regularly blending West African fuel cargoes with toxic waste and sulphur content 200 times the European legal limit (leading to asthma, bronchitis and eye infections in West Africa) was also not bad for the environment.

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“But Nigeria having a refinery that will wean West Africa off import dependency on those European refiners (and allow West Africa control the sulphur content of its own fuels) is where Dialogue Earth and its funders draw the line.

“I’m putting this out there publicly so that nobody will henceforth use the term “conspiracy theory” when it is pointed out for the umpteenth time, that there are American and European states and private interests that are heavily invested in keeping Africa exactly as poor as it is, and that they regularly push levers most of us do not even know exist, to make sure that this status quo is protected.”

Obviously, some western economic interests including some governments seem to be obviously threatened by Nigeria refining its own oil domestically and exporting the excess capacity abroad.

No doubt, Dangote is in for a tough battle with powerful vested interests both locally and internationally and requires some sovereign support to overcome.

Aliko Dangote may not be the best man in terms of his selfish and monopolistic attributes in business as perceived by some people, but on the refinery berthing full strength, Nigerian government must rally State support and expose the shenanigans of these evil forces fighting to frustrate the refinery and hold the country and the continent in perpetual bondage.

Recently, the country announced plans for its refiners to pay for oil in Naira and to consume as many as 445,000 barrels a day of locally produced crude oil. Still, it’s unclear how the latter will happen. But if it does, that will mean less crude for current buyers, notably in Europe.

The Tinubu-led government should not play politics or try to tilt more, either openly or cryptically, to his own personal and selfish agenda and that of foreign negative interests that are obviously arrayed against the Dangote project. That refinery is clearly now beyond Dangote’s personal interest, it has become a national standard and flagship of the nation’s downstream. So whether the President and his family have other interests in Malta, as alleged, does not matter at all in this show of national solidarity to the Dangote Refinery. And how the government handles this will go a long way in turning around the fortunes of the nation’s downstream oil sector, that’s if the President has our collective national interest at heart. God bless Nigeria!

(IFEANYI IZEZE writes from Abuja and can be reached on: [email protected]; 234-8033043009)