By Kingsley Omose
On the surface, the fact that Cote d’Ivoire has bought N2.05 trillion worth of crude oil from Nigeria in the first six months of 2024 looks like excellent business for the two West African countries
In fact, the Cote d’Ivoire purchase of Nigerian crude oil has been on the increase since 2020, and in 2023, trade between both countries reached $1.5 billion, most of it tied to crude oil purchases by Cote d’Ivoire.
But when you put the demand by Cote d’Ivoire for Nigerian crude oil in its right context and look beyond the foreign exchange they are paying, which ultimately goes to fund the import-dependent lifestyles of Nigerians, you will see how blind leadership is in Nigeria.
Cote d’Ivoire has only one refinery, the 80,000-barrel-a-day SIR Refinery in Abidjan, which was set up in 1964 and is run by Total. We are not celebrating here that other than routine shutdown for Turn Around Maintenance, the SIR has been operational since 1964.
We are also not celebrating that the SIR Refinery supplies all the petroleum product needs of Cote d’Ivoire, ensuring that this West African country with about 32 million people never has to suffer petroleum product shortages like Nigeria from whom they are buying crude oil.
The key information that changes this whole narrative is that SIR Refinery in Abidjan beyond meeting the petroleum product needs of Cote d’Ivoire also exports to Mali, Burkina Faso, Togo, Benin Republic and some to Nigeria according to Nairametrics.
These are some of the same West African countries that government officials in Nigeria regularly complain about as being the beneficiaries of smuggled petrol from Nigeria and the reason why imported subsidised petrol consumption is 70 million litres a day and costing Nigeria $600 million monthly.
When you add to this key information of the export capacity of the SIR Refinery of petroleum products to Mali, Burkina Faso, Togo, and Benin Republic, that 650,000 barrel a day Dangote Refinery is its direct competitor at least in the West African market then the pennies begin to drop.
Dangote Refinery has had to battle NNPC Ltd for the supply of crude oil, which it has been sourcing from the US and other parts of the world, the same crude oil that SIR Refinery in Cote d’Ivoire is buying in increasing quantities from Nigeria in 2024.
Then, the same West African market that Dangote Refinery plans to sell petroleum products to, forms the bulk of the market that SIR Refinery is already selling petroleum products to after refining Nigerian crude oil, and collecting foreign exchange from these countries.
So, while Cote d’Ivoire earns foreign exchange from adding value to Nigerian crude oil and producing petroleum products that are exported, Nigeria earns foreign exchange only by selling a primary commodity, crude oil, while seemingly spurning the opportunity to take advantage of the Dangote Refinery.