Dangote refinery to generate $5.5bn from petroleum products export

President of Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, has said that the refinery will generate about $5.5 billion yearly from export of refined products upon completion.

Dangote stated this during the visit of the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Mr. Ibe Kachikwu, to the Lekki Free Trade Zone site of the facility in Ibeju Lekki, Lagos.

The refinery, according to him, has the capacity to refine 650,000 barrels of crude oil per day while the petrochemical plant will produce 780 KTPA polypropylene, 500 KTPA of polyethylene while the fertiliser project will produce 3 million metric tonnes per annum (mmtpa) of Urea.

“We will be adding value to our economy as all these projects will be creating about 4,000 direct and 145,000 indirect jobs. We will also save over $7.5 billion for Nigeria annually through import substitution,” he said.

The Dangote boss lauded the resolve of the Minister for his efforts towards ensuring availability of petroleum products and championing a comprehensive overhaul of the Nigerian energy sector, with a view to making the country self-reliant in petroleum products. He promised that Dangote remained committed to playing its part in the efforts of the Federal Government to comprehensively address the energy crisis in the country.

‘‘As you are aware, we are currently building the world’s largest single line refinery, petrochemical complex and the world’s second largest Urea fertiliser plant,” he said.

In addition, he said the company will also be building the largest sub-sea pipeline infrastructure in any country in the world, with a length of 1,100km, to handle 3 billion SCF of gas per day.

Dangote said plans are on ground to construct a 570MW power plant in the complex, adding that gas from its gas pipeline will augment the natural domestic gas supply with an additional 12,000MW of power generation added to the grid from its gas system.

He assured the Minister that the first phase of the fertiliser plant would come on stream by February 2018 while the refinery operations for petroleum products will be commissioned by December 2019.

In his remarks, Kachikwu promised to create incentives that would ensure that the operations of the refinery thrived through the development of a robust plan that would unlock hindrances that stifle growth in the downstream and midstream markets.

He commended Dangote for investing massively in the refinery project, saying that when the project fully comes on stream, Nigeria should not have any business exporting crude oil.