The Dangote Refinery, established by Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, is scheduled to be inaugurated on May 22.
A presidential aide, Bashir Ahmad, had tweeted that the inauguration would be done by the President Muhammadu Buhari .
“Efforts by the Federal Government to make Nigeria self-sufficient in local refining of crude oil to save the scarce foreign exchange used in the importation of petroleum products have received a boost as the 650,000 barrels per day Dangote Refinery, the world’s largest single-train refinery, is set for inauguration on May 22, 2023, by President Muhammadu Buhari,” Ahmad announced.
The 650,000bpd facility, estimated to worth over $19bn, is an integrated refinery project under construction in the Lekki Free Zone, Lagos. It is expected to be Africa’s biggest oil refinery and the world’s biggest single-train facility.
The company, on its website, said the refinery would meet 100 per cent of the Nigerian requirement of all refined products and also have a surplus of each of these products for export.
“Dangote Petroleum Refinery is a multi-billion dollar project that will create a market for $21bn per annum of Nigerian crude. It is designed to process Nigerian crude with the ability to also process other crude,” the firm stated.
Meanwhile, the announcement of the planned inauguration of the facility on May 22 has elicited excitement and expectations among Nigerians, industry operators, government officials and other stakeholders.
“We are optimistic and excited to know that the refinery is set for inauguration, considering the humongous benefits that it is going to have on not just the oil sector, but on the Nigerian economy,” the National Public Relations Officer, Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, Chief Ukadike Chinedu, stated.
He told our correspondent that operators were hopeful that the facility would eradicate cases of poor petroleum product supply, that often led to incessant scarcity of Premium Motor Spirit, popularly called petrol, across the country.
“With the coming onboard of the Dangote Refinery, we believe that Nigeria will say goodbye to PMS scarcity, as well as the poor supply of other petroleum products.
“So, it is a welcome development and we are optimistic that this will also impact positively on the cost of petroleum products, although I cannot tell you by how much it will bring down the prices of these products,” he stated.
Other operators also confirmed that the refinery would save Nigeria billions of naira, based on the fact that PMS imports into the country would cease, going by the refining capacity of the plant.
The Group Chief Executive Officer of Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, Mele Kyari, for instance, recently explained how the Dangote Refinery and the in-country refining of crude would save Nigeria some costs on logistics.
Kyari had explained in February that the refining of crude oil into PMS in Nigeria would compress the logistics cost around petrol supply by about N17/litre, describing this as significant.
NNPC supplies over 60 million litres of petrol daily to keep Nigeria wet with the product. A N17/litre reduction in logistics cost would translate to N1.02bn savings daily.
