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Claim: Dangote Refinery has just signed a supply deal worth $20 billion with Total Energies.
Verdict: Misleading. While TotalEnergies signed a supply deal with Dangote Refinery, the investment’s worth is undisclosed. Also, the $20 billion mentioned in the report is not the supply deal’s worth but the refinery’s.
Full Text
Discussions about the decline in Nigeria’s crude oil economy have intensified recently with Shell, a foremost oil industry company in the country for years, divesting its onshore subsidiary companies to a consortium of local companies.
Amidst this, an X user, @Woye, posted on May 21, 2024, that Total Energies, a French energy conglomerate, has signed a $20 billion deal with Dangote to supply crude oil.
Part of the post reads, “TotalEnergies signed a deal with Dangote to supply crude oil of $20bn. Yes or No? Answer is YES.”
The claim is made in reaction to recent news about TotalEnergies investing $6 billion in an energy project in Angola over Nigeria.
This post has generated over 95,000 views, 370 likes, and 125 reposts as of May 22, 2024.
While supporting the statement, @OyedemiBabs, commented that the Federal Government should engage in stable economic policies to attract foreign investment, stating, “@Woye please let FG not Tinubu do more about stable policies for more investors to come willingly.”
However, the comment section also featured counter-opinions.
@CertifiedAnelka said, “They said the refinery was built with an investment of $20b, but you said they signed a $20b deal.”
Another user, @Danicious_Dan, added, “If you can carefully read the picture stating that the refinery investment is worth $20bn not that the deal with Dangote is $20bn.”
Given the claim’s controversy, DUBAWA initiated this fact-check to set the record straight.
Verification
Keyword searches across credible sources revealed that although TotalEnergies signed a deal with the Dangote refinery, it was never a $20 billion deal. Further details about the deal’s actual worth have yet to be made public as of the time of filing this report.
Cross-referencing reports by credible news agencies, we found that Dangote Refinery, commissioned in May 2023 but began production in January 2024, is a $20 billion investment by Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote.
The Twitter user had misrepresented the refinery’s invested value to describe the amount of its new deal with TotalEnergies. DUBAWA observed that he attached an image to his post, and we scoured online reports using search operators to generate the report. The poster coined his conclusion from the line, “The refinery, which began production in January, was built with an investment of $20bn (N30.5trn),” seen in the description given to the refinery by Offshore Technology.
Conclusion
Based on our findings, the claim is misleading as the post links the worth of the money invested in building the refinery to a supply deal it signs with a company.
