The Dangote Petroleum Refinery in Lagos is currently going through a modification process to upgrade it from 650,000 barrels per day to 700,000 barrels per day, Sunday PUNCH reports.

The upgrade, which is to add another 50,000bpd to the facility’s nameplate capacity, is expected to end in the fourth quarter of this year.

President of the Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, dropped the hint during a chat with visitors and newsmen during a recent tour of the refinery in Lekii, Lagos.

Dangote said the largest single-train refinery could not reach 100 per cent capacity this year due to the modifications going on, expressing confidence that the modifications would scale up the oil refinery.

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According to Dangote, the Residue Fluid Catalytic Cracking unit is operating at 85 per cent of its capacity as of July 2025. RFCC is a chemical process used in petroleum refineries to convert heavy residue feedstocks into more valuable, lighter products such as gasoline, liquefied petroleum gas, and diesel.

“Our RFCC is at 85 per cent. We are not up to 100 per cent because there are some modifications that we are doing. It will finish by the end of the year, and we believe we will get to 700,000 bpd, not even 650,000, because all the other components that we have and all the other departments have all (reached 100 per cent). Some are even doing up to 145 per cent. So, we’ve done very well in that area,” Dangote said

He disclosed that the refinery bought 19 million barrels of crude from the United States between June and July this year. Dangote noted that the United States supplies about 55 per cent of its crude needs, having bought 10 million barrels in early July.

“As a company, we bought 10 million barrels of crude this month. So, 10 million barrels this month means that at the capacity we are, it’s about 55 per cent coming from the US,” he said.

The billionaire businessman recalled how he decided to build the $20bn refinery to make Nigeria and Africa self-sufficient in energy security. He said he decided to build a refinery after his desire to buy the government-owned refineries was aborted by the late former President Umar Yar’adua in 2007.

According to him, building a refinery is not similar to building a house, saying he would not have started the project if he had known the difficulties involved. However, he expressed confidence that the completion of the facility has shown that nothing is impossible.

“People believe building a refinery is like building a house, but, like what I keep saying, if I knew what we were going to face, I wouldn’t have started it at all. So, the luck that we’ve had now as a group was because we didn’t know what we were getting into, really, and we believe that nothing is impossible,” he said.

Dangote noted that as the project got deeper, the group was faced with whether to stop and sink or continue and succeed. “So, we have to push and continue to make sure that we deliver,” he said.

He said a refinery in Africa became expedient because many countries on the continent relied on fuel imports. “Apart from Algeria and Libya, which are self-sufficient in Africa, technically, everybody is an importer,” he said

Dangote said he was unapologetic in saying that some foreign actors were attacking all industries through importation.

“If you go to Lome, you will see a massive number of ships. That’s what they do to attack all the industries in sub-Saharan Africa. Even if you look at the refineries in South Africa, they are actually not operating. Only one is now operating in South Africa, but we were able to take this risk,” he added.