Dangote Petroleum Refinery has expressed interest in buying two million barrels of crude oil from the U.S., highlighting the economic damage of oil theft to Nigeria.

According to a report by Bloomberg on Monday, U.S.-based Trafigura Group and Dangote Refinery have completed a crude purchase agreement to deliver two million barrels of petroleum by the end of February.

The purchase would make it the first time a Nigerian-owned refinery would purchase foreign crude for local consumption, evidencing the oil-bunkering operations that have skyrocketed under chief of naval staff Emmanuel Ogalla, enmeshed in a multibillion-naira oil bunkering, contract-splitting fraud.

Peoples Gazette exclusively reported how Mr Ogalla, now desperately fighting to keep his job under investigation, had freed several oil tankers busted for transporting stolen crude off Nigerian shores after collecting kickbacks in millions of foreign currency. 

A ripple effect of the bunkering was the nation’s inability to meet Dangote Refinery’s daily processing supply quota, its first-ever private indigenous refinery, which has resorted to importing crude oil from the U.S. to sustain its nascent operations.

With the purchase, Dangote Refinery, which launched its operations in December 2023, is poised to reach a daily processing goal of 350,000 barrels before going into full capacity mode of 650,000 barrels per day.

The United States crude will supplement Dangote’s domestic crude supplies from Nigerian National Petroleum Company Ltd, the country’s major oil company.

Last month, Dangote purchased its first cargo of crude from Agbami via Shell Plc. Other subsequent crude offloads came from Nigeria’s Amenam, Bonny Light and CJ Blend streams, per the Bloomberg report.