In a significant leadership reshuffle, the Dangote Group has named David Bird, a seasoned former Shell and Duqm Refinery executive, as Chief Executive Officer of its petroleum and petrochemicals division, effective July 2025.
Bird’s appointment comes at a pivotal time for the $20 billion refinery complex, the world’s largest single‑train facility, with a nameplate capacity of 650,000 barrels per day
Bird brings over three decades of global industry expertise, including more than 14 years at Shell where he served as Vice President of the $12 billion Prelude FLNG project, head of operations at Pulau Bukom refinery in Singapore, and a key leader at the Balau Pokom refinery in Malaysia . He later led the Duqm refinery in Oman under OQ8, where he played an instrumental role in its development and diversification of crude feedstock
Dangote’s founders remain firmly in place, Aliko Dangote will continue as Chairman of the refinery arm and CEO of the broader conglomerate, which manages Nigeria’s largest cement, sugar, and fertilizer operations.
Bird’s arrival is widely viewed as a strategic recalibration to fix lingering operational setbacks, including design inefficiencies and unit reliability issues, especially within the residue fluid catalytic cracker (RFCC) unit
In interviews with S&P Global’s Platts and LinkedIn, Bird emphasised three clear priorities: maximising refinery output, enforcing feedstock flexibility, and driving Dangote’s growth across Africa
Observers see this as the refinery’s shift from its construction phase into a performance- and market-focused enterprise capable of regional leadership.
Under his direction, Dangote aims to ramp up daily throughput and realise plans to increase capacity to 700,000 barrels per day. Ongoing initiatives include building port infrastructure, establishing foreign storage bases in Namibia, and launching a proprietary fuel distribution network using 4,000 CNG-powered trucks beginning August 2025
Since its commissioning in January 2024, the refinery has already disrupted Nigeria’s fuel import dependence, accounting for significant volumes of jet fuel (45%) and gasoil exports in July 2025, despite Nigeria National Petroleum Company (NNPC) facilities remaining offline.
However, the plant continues to operate under a Naira-based crude and domestic products agreement with NNPC, which holds a 7.2% equity stake and supplies fixed volumes for local consumption, a structure that limits full trading flexibility
David Bird’s leadership thus signals a critical inflection point for Dangote’s refining business. At this juncture, transitioning from mechanical completion to commercial optimisation, his appointment reflects the company’s intent to consolidate operational gains, deepen its continental footprint, and unlock the refinery’s full potential as an energy powerhouse across Africa.
