The President of the Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, has risen in defense of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC) against the purported denial of crude oil supply to his 650,000 barrels per day (bpd) refinery by the national oil company.

Dangote in a brief note issued yesterday, said the Mele Kyari-led NNPC was ready and willing to supply the refinery with crude oil in few weeks' time to enable the commencement of refining operations at the facility.

The chief promoter of the $19.5 billion facility, reputed to be the world's largest single-train refinery, made the clarification following misconceptions drawn from a recent interview granted to S&P Global Commodity Insights, by the company's Group Executive Director, Devakumar Edwin.

However, a portion of the interview, where Edwin had revealed why the commencement of production at the refinery had been delayed a bit was misconstrued in some sessions of the media to mean denial of feedstock supply by the NNPC.

But Dangote in the statement issued yesterday, said NNPC had never denied the company crude oil supply, contrary to some media reports making the rounds.

He noted that the NNPC had rather been very encouraging and supportive in their business trajectory in the areas of oil and gas.

Dangote further said: "Being a shareholder and a responsive partner, it is an aberration to assume that the NNPC will in anyway do anything to truncate or delay the commencement of operations of our refinery. We will start refining with our Nigeria crude."

"We deeply appreciate our partnership with the NNPC and its subsidiaries, under the leadership of Group Chief Executive Officer, (GCEO) NNPC Ltd., Mr. Mele Kyari" Dangote concluded.

Through the refinery located at the Lekki Free Trade Zone, Lagos Dangote intends to make Nigeria self-sufficient in fuels and free a huge volume for export thus ending the embarrassing title of Africa's largest oil producer that imports all its refined petroleum products.