‘Ras Ħanżir’ refinery claims untrue, says company in Nigerian fuel crisis

An oil company caught up in a political storm in Nigeria has denied owning an alleged refinery in Malta, insisting in a company statement that no such facility or its holding company exists.

Nigeria’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, owner of the Dangote refinery, alleged that government officials on the board of Nigeria’s national petroleum company had shares in Maltese blending plants.

The claim was that this import-dependency on petroleum stored through the oil tanks at Ras Ħanżir, which is owned by the Maltese government’s fuel company Enemed, raised prices for Nigerians.

In the process, another Nigerian company, Oando plc, issued a statement to deny claims that its own principals were shareholders of a fictitious company called Ras Hanzir Oil Terminal Ltd.

Oando said it had requested “a comprehensive investigation” with a search of the Maltese business registry, showing no results for such a company. “Subsequent due diligence efforts similarly failed to uncover any record of the company’s existence. We believe that the false claims are of the malicious intent of misleading the public and our stakeholders.”

In 2023, Nigeria experience a unique spike in imports of €2.25 billion worth of blended fuel imported from Malta, which holds oil tanks at the Ras Ħanżir facility to store imported fuel.

Dangote is at loggerheads with the Nigerian petroleum regulator NNPC over his refinery’s access to Nigeria’s crude oil, after the regulator cast doubt over the quality of his diesel, citing higher sulphur content that imported fuels.

Background to claims

Nigeria is Africa’s largest producer of crude oil, and the world’s 15th biggest, but none of its existing government-owned refineries are operational.

Dangote built the $20 billion privately-owned refinery after making his fortune in cement and sugar.

For decades Nigerians enjoyed subsidised petrol prices. But last year incoming President Bola Tinubu stopped the subsidies due to their unsustainability, leading to a rise in prices surging by as much as four-fold.

In 2024, shortages of petrol led to queues outside petrol stations, and the state-owned NNPC warned against people panic-buying.

The Dangote refinery could solve Nigeria’s longstanding logistics problem by producing 650,000 barrels of fuel per day once fully operational, exceeding the country’s 480,000 barrels per day usage and exporting the surplus.

Dangote is sourcing crude imports from the USA, but the regulator has reduced a 20% stake in the refinery to 7.2%, ostensibly an attempt to weaken the company’s market dominance.

As the impasse dragged on, Dangote alleged that “some of the NNPC people and some traders have opened blending plants somewhere off Malta. We all know these areas. We know what they are doing.”

The NNPC chief executive officer Mele Kyrai denied the allegation. “I am inundated by enquiries from family members, friends, and associates on the public declaration by the president of Dangote Group that some NNPC workers have established a blending plant in Malta, thereby impeding procurements from local production of petroleum products.

“To clarify the allegations regarding the blending plant, I do not own or operate any business directly or by proxy anywhere in the world except for a local mini-agric venture, neither am I aware of any employee of the NNPC that owns or operates a blending plant in Malta or anywhere else in the world.”