Comrade Festus Osifo, President of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), believes there is no chance of the Dangote refinery commencing production before the end of the year, 2023.
The TUC President made this know during a Channels Television on Wednesday that it will take some time for the Dangote refinery to reach the optimal position of complete output reliance.
“As of now, they may have their own mechanism, because it is 80 percent privately owned that we may not know. But from our external view, we don’t think that it will come into even up to 50 percent production before the end of the year,” he said.
“Even if the Dangote refinery is working up to 60 percent in-store capacity, then you add that, although the old Port Harcourt refinery is quite small.
“But if you add that with the fact that today our consumption has come down, from the reported consumption of about 65, 66, 70 million litres consumed per day. Today, we now have this level of consumption somewhere around 40 to 45 million litres, these refineries could walk.
The Union leader said that, prior to the refinery’s start-up, employing crude in the test process would have hinted at the potential of the product becoming available soon, alleviating sorrow.
“You need crude to be doing some of the pre-commissioning stages. As of today, that has not quite commenced, but for the Dangote refinery, we are not quite sure whether it will come up between now and the end of the year.
“From our findings, we pray every day, we push, and we hope that the Dangote refinery should actually come on stream because we learnt that they have not started the full pre-commissioning using crude.
“For you to be able to know fully when the refinery will come on stream, you may have done a lot of simulations.”
