Nigeria, Sept. 26 -- The Dangote Petroleum Refinery, Nigeria's lifeline from decades of rot in the petroleum downstream, has to fight every inch for its turf. The fight started 18 years ago, when the refinery was only an idea.

In 2007, those who swore that a refinery - any refinery, public or private - would only work over their dead bodies forced President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua to reverse the sale of the Port Harcourt and Kaduna Refineries with a gun over his head. Among the vested interests, the unions pulled the trigger on the $670 million sale to Blue Star, the Dangote-led consortium.

Since then, Nigeria has spent an estimated $20 billion trying to fix four state refineries with a combined capacity of 450,000 bpd, roughly the amount i...