Africa Oil Downstream researcher & analyst, David Sineke, has stated that the petroleum sector of the continent must strive to be self-sufficient and that can only be achieved if the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) makes it a point to establish five major oil refinery plants across the continent.

He said the continent does not need individual-country based refineries but rather a giant assembly that can be accessed by all member states to grow the downstream petroleum sector.

David Sineke said this while speaking at the 2021 Ghana International Petroleum Conference on Zoom.

“We saw in the presentation that in the next possible future, African’s refinery capacity is not going to meet the 100% demand. Currently, if I may use raw figures, Africa's production is about less than 50% of total consumption from our existing refinery. Even if Dangote comes on stream it won’t make a big dent on that. So we need Africa to be fully or 95% self-sufficient in petroleum production or refinery. We need about three Dangote -sized refineries, one in West Africa, one in Southern Africa and one in East Africa or North Africa, or else any local production will be consumed locally,” he said.

Meanwhile, Dangote Refinery is an oil refinery owned by the Dangote Group that is under construction in Lekki, Nigeria. When complete, it will have the capacity to process about 650,000 barrels per day of crude oil, making it the largest single-train refinery in the world. He has invested over 7 billion US dollars.

The oil refinery is what industry players are hinting could be the major tool to put Africa on the map in terms of petroleum production.

However, GhIPCON is designed to actively bring to the fore the petroleum industry’s perspective and guidance on issues of governmental and regulatory policy as well as best practices for the advancement of the industry, not only in Ghana but across the sub-region and beyond.