By Miriam Humbe
There’s excitement in the air as the Monday, May 22, 2023 date of the Dangote Refinery and Petrochemical Company’s commissioning by President Muhammadu Buhari approaches.
The country had been without an operational refinery for more than a decade, with the attendant pains suffered by Nigerians from shortages of the Premium Motor Spirit, (PMS) and similar products.
Consumers of petroleum products in the country knew too well, the agonizing experience of spending long hours and entire nights at fuel stations with the probability of getting same equal to nil.
The establishment of the Dangote Refinery, by Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, with a production capacity of 650, 000 barrels per day (bpd), is expected to dwarf Nigeria’s fuel shortages, ending the agonizing manhour losses by citizens needing the products.
Dangote Refinery is one of the few companies in the world executing a Petroleum Refinery and a Petrochemical complex directly as an Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) Contractor.
From May 22, on a daily basis, no fewer than 2,900 tankers of 33KL capacity are expected to load different petroleum products from the Dangote Refinery across the country.
With the Dangote Refinery going fully operational, Nigeria now has a ready market for its crude oil, with the huge hope of raking in $21Billion annually thereby boosting the nation’s Gross Domestic Product, (GDP).
The good news is that, the Dangote Petroleum Refinery is made to meet 100% of Nigeria’s requirement of all refined products and also have surplus of each of these products for export.
Built with State-of-the-art technology, Dangote Refinery is set to supply Nigeria with various petroleum products viz; 53 million litres of PMS per day, 10 million litres of kerosene per day, 34 million litres of diesel per day and 2 million litres of Aviation jet fuel per day.
The Refinery will also have an excess of these products for export to countries in the sub- Saharan African region and beyond.
Located in the Ibeju-Lekki area of Lagos, the Dangote Petroleum Refinery comes with a 900 KTPA Polypropylene Plant.
Built at the capacity of 435 MW, the Power Plant in the Dangote Refinery will conveniently provide power supply to five neighboring States of Oyo, Ogun, Osun, Kwara and Ekiti.
For employment, the Dangote Refinery has trained 900 young engineers in refinery operations outside Nigeria with
another six Mechanical Engineers trained in the GE Oil & Gas University in Italy.
50 Process Engineers are trained by Honeywell/UOP for six months and 50 Management Trainees; secondment for succession.
With these figures and more unmentioned here, the Dangote Refinery is by far, the highest employer of labour in the private sector.
This is apart from other Employment Generating Activities, (EGA) anticipated on the Refinery site.
The Dangote Refinery has temporary housing units capable of housing 33,000 persons; in essence this will drastically address Nigeria’s housing deficit.
Group Managing Director/Group CEO of NNPC Limited, Mele Kyari said at the Nigerian Oil and Gas Opportunities Fair 2023 in Bayelsa recently, that the company took an early strategic stake in the Dangote Refinery because it saw the potential it presented.
Kyari said the intention to sell crude to the Dangote Refinery was to ensure that the company would have an assured market for its crude.
The NNPC Limited is entrusted with about 455,000 barrels of crude oil produced in Nigeria which before now, was refined in foreign countries and sold to Nigeria exorbitantly.
This represents the share of Nigeria’s oil production from various crude production arrangements with local and international oil companies.
Kyari said: “By producing refined products domestically, the Dangote Refinery and Petrochemical Company strengthens Nigeria’s energy independence and security.”
“The integrated power plant within the refinery has a capacity of 435 MW, which exceeds the total power requirement of Ibadan Distribution Company (Disco).”
NNPC Limited said that this would significantly contribute to the economic development of many states in the region.
The NNPC Limited said the reduced reliance on imports will protect Nigeria from the effect of volatile global oil prices therefore, fortifying the country’s energy security.
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