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Nigeria’s Aliko Dangote says 650,000 barrel per day oil refinery to begin operations in 2023

Published

2 years ago

April 24, 2022

Africa’s wealthiest man, Nigeria’s Aliko Dangote said on Friday his 650,000 barrel per day oil refinery is expected to be commissioned before the close of President Muhammadu Buhari’s presidential term, which ends next year.

Mr. Dangote made the disclosure in response to a question after a meeting with President Buhari at the presidential villa in Abuja.

“By the grace of God, Mr. President will come and commission (the refinery) before the end of his term,” Dangote said.

The Dangote refinery is situated on a 6,180 acres (2,500 hectares) site at the Lekki Free Zone, Lekki, Lagos State. It will process about 650,000 barrels of crude oil daily, transported via pipelines from oil fields in the Niger Delta, where natural gas will also be sourced to supply the fertilizer factory and be used in electrical generation for the refinery complex.

Although Nigeria is one of the largest oil producers in the world, the West African country does not refine crude oil locally. State-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has four refineries, two in Port Harcourt (PHRC), and one each in Kaduna (KRPC) and Warri (WRPC) but none has worked to capacity for years despite several investments to succinate the refineries.

The government sees the refinery as a solution to ending Nigeria’s reliance on imports for most refined petroleum products even though Nigeria is Africa’s biggest oil producer and exporter.

The situation with the state-owned refineries in Nigeria and the refusal of past and present governments in Nigeria adds to the high national anticipation surrounding the Dangote refinery but experts have warned that hope should be with caution on Dangote’s project as it only positions a monopoly of an essential commodity like oil.

Related Topics:Aliko Dangote DANGOTE REFINERY Featured

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Ghana’s finance minister anticipates debt restructuring MoU with lenders

Published

12 hours ago

April 22, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

Ghana’s Finance Minister has announced that the country’s two main creditors will send him a draft Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on a restructuring deal in May, signifying a major progress in the country’s debt reform.

Once the MoU is signed, it will make public the deal that was made in January to restructure $5.4 billion in loans with its official creditors, such as China and France.

The restructuring is a big step toward Ghana getting rid of its debt as it works to get out of the worst economic crisis in a generation. It should also allow the country to get more money from its $3 billion IMF program.

Mohammed Amin Adam said he was sure the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank would work together at the Spring Meetings in Washington, D.C. In June, the Monetary Fund’s executive board will agree to review its staff-level deal.

From 2023 to 2028, Ghana’s national debt to gross domestic product level was supposed to go down by 15%. This guess says that the number will have gone down every year for six years, ending at 69.96% in 2028.

Ghana didn’t pay back most of its foreign loans in December 2022 because it became too expensive to do so. But now it needs to work out a deal with private holders of about $13 billion in foreign bonds. It has also changed most of its domestic debt.

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Nigeria’s Access Bank says its N365bn capital raise to be fully digital

Published

1 day ago

April 21, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

Access Holdings, which is the parent company of Nigeria’s Access Bank, has revealed that its N365bn rights issue will be done entirely digitally.

In a notice sent to the Nigerian Exchange Limited, the holding company said the bank wanted to raise N365bn through a rights issue to strengthen its capital base, drive growth, and be ready to take advantage of new possibilities in the financial sector.

The bank also planned to raise $1.5bn in capital through the sale of stock, quasi-equity, and debt. Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, the head of the Holdco, told reporters at the second Annual General Meeting that digital technology would play an interesting role in the bank’s efforts to raise capital.

He said, “If you remember the 2004 capital raising, we went around Nigeria. It led to the democratisation of our capital market, others followed suit. The number of shareholders of banks and the capital market increased as a result of that effort.

“This time around, we have digital technology that we are going to deploy fully. There have been public offers that have leveraged digital technology but using Access Bank’s capacity, the NGX’s digital capacity, we are going to do some interesting things. This rights issue, we have shareholders and each of them would be able to make that investment decision just by touching their phones. That way, the issue of dilution and concerns that they may have about participation would be dealt with.”

Aig-Imoukhuede told shareholders about the time in 2004 when the banking group raised money and stressed that they were up to the job.

He said, “We’re moving on to the rights issue resolution. At this junction, I think we’ll take one minute to crave your indulgence as I appreciate you all for the support you have given our predecessor company, Access Bank, and of course now Access Holdings.

“We have sought to raise capital. The amount that we mention today is high and significant and the capital-raising effort that we are pursuing is a significant step into the future. I would like to remind shareholders that between 2004 and 2007, our team when I was CEO raised $2bn of common equity capital. Therefore, come 2024, Access Bank is much older, much wiser, much stronger, larger and significantly respected by the capital market, really raising over N300bn is not much of a challenge.”

There are more than 700 branches and service sites for Access Bank on three continents. The company does business in 20 countries and has more than 65 million users. Over 500,000 people save money at FTB, and more than 42,000 people take money from them. More than 40% of these people are women.