Nigeria’s Dangote drafts Duqm CEO to overcome refining challenges

Nigeria’s Dangote Group has appointed the former head of Oman’s Duqm refinery as the first CEO of its petroleum and petrochemicals business as it strives to overcome production challenges and advance its next wave of expansion.

Effective from July 2025, David Bird stepped in as CEO of the Dangote Group's fuels and petrochemicals business, which commissioned the world's largest single-train refinery last year.

Dangote Group founder Aliko Dangote will stay on as chairman of the refining business and CEO of the wider conglomerate, which is also active in cement, fertilizers and sugar refining.

The business is expected to tap Bird's experience expanding the Duqm refinery and diversifying its crude slate as CEO of OQ8, a role he adopted months before the Omani complex began its first test runs in 2023.

In written comments to Platts, Part of S&P Global Energy, Bird said his focus at Dangote will involve advancing the group's footprint beyond the Nigerian market and across the African continent. As CEO of the refining business, he will be responsible for ensuring maximum output and efficiency for the refinery, and aims to make the group a leader in the global market, he said in a LinkedIn update.

The appointment comes after a string of unit upsets and "design issues" that have stalled the ramp-up process of the 650,000-b/d refinery, while its leadership has called out a hostile business environment for challenging its operations.

Since it was commissioned in January 2024, Dangote has quickly grown its market share in the Nigerian fuel sector, displacing large volumes of gasoline imports that the country once relied on. However, Aliko Dangote has railed against "rent-seeking" trade partners and substandard fuel imports for putting strain on the business.

In a previous interview with Platts, Bird emphasized a trading-led approach to achieve a competitive edge in the refining sector, with a focus on high utilization rates, efficiency and feedstock flexibility.

His approach aligns with a recent shift from the Dangote complex to process a wider range of crude grades, partially spurred by limited availability of the Nigerian oil it was designed to process.

However, the Nigerian refinery is still obliged to sell fixed volumes of its oil products into the domestic crude market under a naira-based trade agreement with the Nigerian National Petroleum Company, a 7.2% stakeholder in the business.

As the Dangote Group eyes its next wave of growth, it plans to expand the capacity of the Lagos refinery to 700,000 b/d, build out port infrastructure and establish foreign storage assets in Namibia and other countries. In August, it is set to roll out its own distribution business with a fleet of 4,000 CNG-powered trucks.

Dangote Group officials have also shared ambitions to list the refining business on the London and Lagos stock exchanges, and Aliko Dangote reiterated plans to take the business public July 22.

Ramp-up journey

After years of setbacks and budget challenges, the speed of the refinery's ramp-up in 2024 caught many analysts by surprise, and the complex quickly began exerting pressure on global oil benchmarks as it began exporting its products.

Yet despite beginning test runs on its main gasoline outlet, the residue fluid catalytic cracker, in Q3 2024, the company has since suffered repeated outages on the unit in 2025, forcing it to rely on its lower-yield reformer and sacrifice output over extended periods.

Speaking to Platts earlier in July, a Dangote executive said the RFCC was running at 85%. He denied reports that the company will undergo a planned turnaround on the unit in December.

According to S&P Global Commodities at Sea data, Nigeria exported some 220,000 b/d of petroleum products in July 2025, when outages at NNPC facilities made Dangote the country's only active refiner.

The complex exported 30,000 b/d of residual fuel, a refining byproduct which would normally be kept on site for further processing in the RFCC under normal operations. Exports continue to be dominated by jet fuel, which accounted for 45% of total shipments, and gasoil with a 24% share.