July 22, 2025 [MSN]- 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 PUNCHreports.

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.

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.