Dangote Refinery To Start Operation December, 2023 If… Dangote

-Says Refinery Could Reach 650,000bpd Capacity By The End Of 2024

-Would Eventually Be Floated As A Separate Company, Initially On The Lagos Stock Exchange

The owner of the Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemical Project, a subsidiary of Dangote Industries Limited, Aliko Dangote, has said that provided his Dangote Group can secure sufficient crude oil and the plant works as it is supposed to, the refinery could start producing diesel, kerosene and jet fuel as soon as next month (December).

He spoke in an interview with Financial Times published on Saturday

He said: “We’re starting with 350,000 barrels a day. A deal had already been clinched for the “first cargo of about 6mn barrels” for delivery next month.

Dangote was quoted to have said that he believed the refinery could reach its capacity of 650,000 barrels a day by the end of 2024.

He also said that it was “shameful”, that Nigeria, a major oil producer for more than 50 years, could not refine its own crude in anything like sufficient quantity.

FT reported: “At full tilt, the refinery, the world’s largest “single train” facility with just one distillation unit, could save Nigeria billions in foreign exchange currently spent on imported fuel.”

According to FT, Dangote rejected suggestions that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company of Nigeria Limited (NNPCL) was playing hardball to negotiate a bigger share of the refinery, which he said would generate revenue of $25bn a year at full capacity.

FT reported that to build the massive project on 2,500 hectares of swampland outside Lagos, Dangote had to construct his own port and road to take delivery of heavy equipment, establish his own trucking company to move it and his own industrial welding facility to put it together.

He was quoted to have said that he had laid enough cable to stretch twice around the globe and had moved 65mn tonnes of sand.

He said: “I don’t think NNPC needs to buy more shares. I think they’re OK with what we’ve given them.” Dangote, according to FT, said the refinery would eventually be floated as a separate company, initially on the Lagos stock exchange.

“You will not see this kind of project in Nigeria in the next 20 years. No outside contractor had been willing to take on Nigerian risk, so I had to design and build the whole thing in-house.

“We didn’t cut costs. We didn’t cut corners. “We didn’t do it for people to clap us. We did it for posterity.”