Dangote oil refinery project is set to boost activities in Africa’s downstream petroleum sector, according to Babatunde Paul Ruwase, president of Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI)
Ruwase, who led members of the chamber on a tour of Dangote jetty, refinery and fertiliser plants in Lagos, expressed excitement over the pace of work at the refinery and fertiliser plants, which he described as a game changer for the Nigerian oil sector.
He commended that president and chief executive of Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote for the investment in Africa.
“This project is the first of its kind. There is no investor in Nigeria that has developed the courage to come up with such a big project. From what we have seen today, we now have a better perception of the project. From what we have seen on the ground, it shows that the project is a reality and it is possible for Nigeria to become the exporter of petroleum product,” he said.
He also commended the company for building a jetty to carter for the movement of heavy equipment to the refinery site.
Speaking on the progress made so far, Rama Rao Putta, head, quality assurance/quality control, Dangote Oil Refinery Company Limited, described the project as the largest single train petroleum refinery in the world with a capacity to process 650,000 bpd of crude oil.
He said that the refinery will lead to the protection of forex revenue of around US$16bn billion a year at current market prices and saving of US$10bn a year through domestic supplies of petroleum products.
Putta said that the refinery is going to create 100,000 indirect employments through retail outlets and ease availability of petroleum products in the country.
He noted that the company has completed the training of the first and second batches of Nigerian Engineers in India and that the employees were being acclimatised at the site.
Speaking also at the event, general manager of Dangote Fertiliser Limited, Anurag Jaiswal, described Dangote Fertiliser project as the largest granulated urea fertiliser complex coming up in the entire fertilizer industry history in the world.
“This is going to be one of the largest single capacity complex in the world producing in total 8,000 tonnes of urea daily. We’ll be having two trains of ammonia and two trains of urea and each train will produce 4,000 tonnes. So in a year, it will be 3 million tonnes,” Jaiswal stated.