Fact Check: Does Sinclair Oil Refinery have the same size as Dangote Refinery?
Claim: In a video published on Instagram, popular Afrobeats singer Seun Kuti called out the Chairman of the Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, saying the Federal Government spent $2bn to purchase a 20 per cent stake in Dangote Refinery, while the same amount was used to buy the entire Sinclair Refinery in America. He noted that both refineries have the same size.
He said, “Do you know how much the Federal Government put into the refinery? They gave $2bn. I did a live stream the day they announced they had given Dangote $2bn for 20 per cent of that refinery. That same day, Sinclair Oil in America sold the same size of refinery with rail tracks, trains, and other things for $2bn. The same Dangote has the audacity to come outside and say the government is sabotaging him.”
Findings
Seun Kuti is a popular Afrobeats artiste with a large following on social media. The live video, which he titled, “Organised abandonment, misinformation and miseducation” had been watched by more than 160,000 of his Instagram followers and shared by different blogs.
According to information from the official website of Dangote Group, the Dangote Refinery is the world’s biggest single-train facility which has 1,100 kilometres to handle 3bn Standard Cubic Foot of gas per day. The refinery, built by Aliko Dangote, was launched on May 22, 2023, but commenced operation on Friday, January 12, 2024, after taking delivery of six million barrels of crude oil.
Situated in the Lekki Free Zone near Lagos, the refinery has 4.78bn litres of storage capacity for refined petroleum products and is designed to produce up to 50m litres of gasoline and 15m litres of diesel a day. The refinery is a 650,000bpd integrated project.
However, the Sinclair Oil Company operates an 85,000 barrel-per-day refinery in Sinclair, Wyoming, and a 25,000bpd refinery in Casper, Wyoming. The two refineries (110,000 bdp) process crude from the Rocky Mountain region, while the Sinclair operation also runs Canadian crude.
According to Reuters, the company has 1,500 branded gasoline stations across 29 states in the US. It is best known for its trademark green dinosaur mascot, Dino, seen on gas station signs and depicted in a balloon that has flown in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York several times. The company also has a network of crude oil and finished-product pipelines and terminals in the Rocky Mountain and midcontinent regions.
The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture showed that Harry Ford Sinclair (1876–1956) formed the Sinclair Oil and Refining Corporation on May 1, 1916, as a fully integrated company with production, pipeline, refining, and product distribution capabilities. The two refineries of the American oil company were, however, acquired for $2.6bn by HollyFrontier Corporation in August 2021.
In February 2024, the Dangote Refinery was ranked the seventh largest refinery in the world by NS Energy and SK Energy, but the American refinery was not among the top 10 on the list.
In August 2021, a former Minister of State for Petroleum, Timipre Sylva, said the Federal Executive Council authorised the acquisition of a 20 per cent stake in Dangote Refinery for $2.76bn. But recently, Dangote revealed that the government’s stake in the refinery has reduced to 7.2 per cent from the initial figure.
A Professor of Energy with specialisation in Oil, Natural Gas, Electricity, and Energy Transitions at the University of Lagos, Dayo Ayoade, said Kuti was wrong.
“How can Sinclair Oil Refinery be of the same level as Dangote Refinery of 650,000bpd? Seun is not an expert on energy. He is a musician and social activist. So, you can’t take him seriously on energy issue. Clearly, he is not correct on the claim because the Dangote refinery has just been built. It is not a refinery that has been on ground for years like Sinclair, which is an old refinery,” he added.
Verdict: The claim by son of the Afrobeats legend is false
