The Dangote Group has confirmed a fire incident at its Effluent Treatment Plant (ETP) in Lagos on Wednesday, but said it was minor and was swiftly contained.
Mr Anthony Chiejina, the Group Head of Corporate Communications at Dangote Group, disclosed this in a statement in Lagos.
Chiejina said: “There is no cause for alarm as the refinery is operating and there is no recorded injury or harm to any of our staff on duty.”
He said that emergency services responded on time to contain the incident.
According to the spokesman, the cause of the fire is currently unknown, and investigations are underway to determine the extent of the damage and the cause of the incident.
On Sunday June 23, Vice President, Oil and Gas at Dangote Industries Limited (DIL), Devakumar Edwin, had accused International Oil Companies (IOCs) in Nigeria of doing everything to frustrate the survival of Dangote Oil Refinery and Petrochemicals.
Edwin said the IOCs are deliberately and willfully frustrating the refinery’s efforts to buy local crude by jerking up high premium price above the market price, thereby forcing it to import crude from countries as far as the United States, with its attendant high costs.
According to him: “While the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) are trying their best to allocate the crude for us, the IOCs are deliberately and willfully frustrating our efforts to buy the local crude. It would be recalled that the NUPRC, recently met with crude oil producers as well as refineries owners in Nigeria, in a bid to ensure full adherence to Domestic Crude Oil Supply Obligations (DCSO), as enunciated under section 109(2) of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA). It seems that the IOCs’ objective is to ensure that our Petroleum Refinery fails. It is either they are deliberately asking for ridiculous/humongous premium or, they simply state that crude is not available. At some point, we paid $6 over and above the market price. This has forced us to reduce our output as well as import crude from countries as far as the US, increasing our cost of production.”
