President of Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, says the Dangote Refinery and FertilizerOil projects will kick off before September.
The business mogul disclosed this when President of the African Development Bank (AfDB) Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, led a delegation of the bank to the project site in Lagos.
“The refinery will commence operation by the third quarter of 2022. On the mechanical completion, we are almost finished but we have started hydro testing, almost 70 per cent gone, hopefully before the end of Q3 operation will commence,” Dangote said.
Group Executive Director, Strategy, Portfolio Development & Capital Projects, Dangote Industries Limited, Devakumar Edwin, said the refinery complex, which includes a refinery, petrochemical plant, a fertilizer plant and a subsea pipeline project, is the largest single-train refinery in the world.
He said the 650,000 barrels-per-day refinery would stimulate economic development in Nigeria.
Mr Edwin said the Dangote Petroleum Refinery can meet 100 percent of the Nigerian requirement of all liquid products (Gasoline, Diesel, Kerosene and Aviation Jet), and also have surplus of each of these products for export.
He stated that this would create a market for $11 billion per annum of Nigerian crude and foreign exchange savings/earnings $9.9 billion.
“We have impacted on job creation with 3,580 Nigerian personnel on site, excluding employment by the various contractors and subcontractors at the site,” he said.
In his remarks, the AfDB President said, “One of the things I admire the most about Alhaji Dangote is that he actually believes in Nigeria, and he invests his money in Nigeria. He believes in Africa and invests in Africa. Nobody could invest the type of billions of dollars that is here, unless the person not only has the vision but also the commitment and passion for his country. We are extremely proud of you and of your commitment to the continent.
“I am completely blown away with what I saw here today. I can’t believe what I saw. This project will reverse the huge sum the nation spends on foreign exchange. When you look at how much we import, it is about $57 billion worth of different products and we export only about $50.4 billion, so we have to balance that with about $7 billion and talking to them here, they showed us that they can have a domestic market of about $11 billion and that is an incredible market and that will save Nigeria about $9 billion, a year from importing petroleum products. So, this is huge for Nigeria and even for Africa as a continent.”
