Africa’s richest person, Aliko Dangote, is thinking about doing something new and ground-breaking. He is looking to create a special part of his business that trades oil. This part could be in London and help with the work of his big oil refinery in Nigeria.
This decision might push aside big global trading companies that were talking for a long time about helping Dangote’s huge refinery. They wanted to give money and oil to the refinery in exchange for the products it makes. People in the trading community are excited about this because the refinery, which took almost ten years to build, is getting ready to change how the world deals with oil and fuel.
People who know about this say that Dangote is getting more involved in the decision-making. They say that a new part of the business, led by Radha Mohan, a person who used to work for Essar, might be in charge of trading. This team is looking for more people to join and make it stronger.
Even though the refinery faced problems and cost $6 billion more than planned, it has started working. From January to February, it already turned about 8 million barrels of oil into products. But it will take some more months to work at full power.
To help the refinery get the oil it needs, a company called Vitol paid in advance for certain product shipments, and Trafigura swapped crude oil for future fuel shipments. These companies, based in Geneva, have not officially talked about these transactions.
