Dangote Plans Refinery Upgrade to Dethrone India and Lead the Global Refining Market
Upon its conception, the Dangote Oil Refinery was presented as a 650,000 barrels-per-day facility, positioning it as the largest single-train oil refinery globally. However, the company recently revealed that this figure does not represent its ultimate target.
Aliko Dangote, President of the Dangote Group, has announced plans to expand the oil production capacity of the Dangote Refinery from 650,000 barrels per day to 1.4 million barrels per day.
He made this known during an interview with S&P Global, as seen in the Punch Newspaper.
“We have to build the refinery again, either here or somewhere else. But really, somewhere else is not possible because we’d have to go and spend so much building infrastructure, and we have the infrastructure already here,” Dangote stated.
This is hardly the first time Dangote has made mention of plans to expand.
In July, the refinery revealed that it was undergoing a strategic upgrade to expand its production capacity from 650,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 700,000 bpd by the end of 2025.
Dangote Refinery has a capacity of 650,000 barrels per day (bpd), making it the world’s seventh largest refinery and Africa’s largest.
With plans to upgrade to 700,000 bpd, it would beat South Korea’s Onsan Refinery, which is ranked sixth with a capacity of 669,000 bpd.
However, with the latest plan to expand to 1.4 million barrels per day, the Dangote Refinery is gunning for the largest oil refinery in the world, beating the world’s largest 1.36 mbpd refinery in Jamnagar, India.
According to global energy and commodity agency Argus, the refinery’s output grew to approximately 610,000 barrels per day (bpd) in August 2025, approaching its official nameplate capacity of 650,000 bpd.
In a webcast called “Can the Dangote Refinery Declare Victory Over Doubters?” Benedict George, Editor of the Argus European Products Report, claimed that the factory had exceeded industry expectations by continuing to operate at high levels into 2025.
“In recent months, we have been looking at above 400,000 barrels per day. As of June, we were around 440,000, 450,000 barrels per day,” he stated.
“So we are well above half of its nameplate capacity. And output is rising starkly as a result, as you can imagine. This month alone, we are looking at around 610,000 barrels per day in implied running rates,” he added.
Additionally, in May, Africa’s richest man said that the Dangote group is on track to generate $30 billion in total revenue next year.
He noted that his oil refinery alone is set to grow its earnings by at least $5 billion in 2026, up from a projected $25 billion this year.
