The Chairman of Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, has disclosed that the first tranche of petroleum products from the refinery will be supplied to the market before the end of July. Dangote made this announcement at the commissioning of the integrated refinery project located in the Lekki free trade zone area of Lagos State on Monday. He stated that it is a milestone in a new and exciting trajectory for Nigeria’s oil and gas downstream sector.
The business mogul said the group plans to replicate in the oil sector what was achieved in the cement and fertilizer markets, where Nigeria transformed from being the largest importer of the products to a net exporter. “Our first goal is to ramp up projections of various production to ensure that within this year, we can fully satisfy our nation’s demand for higher quality products to enable us to eliminate the tragedy of import dependency and the dumping in our market of toxic substandard petroleum products,” he said.
“Our first products will hit the market before the end of July, beginning of August this year.” Dangote added that the refinery would run at the highest capacity utilisation and the highest efficiency, allowing the refinery to export competitively to other markets.
The refinery set up to refine 650,000 barrels of crude oil per day transforms crude oil into different petroleum products such as diesel, gasoline, jet fuel and kerosene. It will also produce Euro-V quality gasoline and diesel, as well as jet fuel and polypropylene. According to the group, the facility is designed to process a large variety of crudes, including many African crudes, some Middle Eastern crudes, and US (United States) Light Tight Oil.
With the establishment of the petroleum refinery, Dangote Group is seeking to reduce Nigeria’s reliance on refined petroleum product imports. This move is expected to ensure increased competition and a drop in the prices of refined products in the Nigerian market.
