Lagos, Nigeria— _Effective July 2025, David Bird, former CEO of Oman’s Duqm Refinery and ex-Shell executive, has been appointed as the first Chief Executive Officer of Dangote Group’s fuels and petrochemicals business, tasked with boosting production and expanding operations across Africa.
The Dangote refinery, recognized as the largest single-train refinery globally with a 650,000 barrels-per-day capacity, has faced operational setbacks—including unit disruptions and design challenges—that have slowed full ramp-up since its January 2024 commissioning. Bird’s appointment aims to tackle these issues by maximizing refinery output and enhancing operational efficiency.
Bird shared via LinkedIn his commitment to expanding Dangote’s footprint beyond Nigeria, targeting leadership in the global refining sector. His experience includes managing major projects at Shell and leading Duqm Refinery’s start-up and diversification efforts, skills expected to accelerate Dangote’s growth trajectory.
Aliko Dangote remains chairman of the refining business and the wider conglomerate, which also operates in cement, fertilizers, and sugar refining sectors.
Facing constraints like limited availability of Nigerian crude originally intended for the plant, Dangote has recently shifted to processing a wider slate of crude grades. Bird’s trading-led strategy emphasizes high utilization, feedstock flexibility, and efficiency to sharpen the refinery’s competitive edge.
Looking ahead, Dangote plans to expand the refinery’s capacity to 700,000 barrels per day, develop port infrastructure, and establish foreign storage facilities in Namibia and other countries. In August 2025, it will launch its own distribution business with 4,000 CNG-powered trucks.
The group also aims to list its refining operations on the London and Lagos stock exchanges, with Aliko Dangote reaffirming plans to go public by July 22.
Despite repeated outages in 2025—particularly affecting the residue fluid catalytic cracker unit which processes refining byproducts—Dangote has maintained exports of petroleum products, including jet fuel and gasoil. In July 2025, Dangote became Nigeria’s sole active refiner amid outages at national facilities, exporting around 220,000 barrels per day.
This leadership appointment marks a critical step in Dangote Group’s efforts to consolidate its refinery’s position domestically and internationally while overcoming recent operational and market challenges.
By Enoch Odesola | August 2, 2025
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