The construction of 650,000 barrels per day of crude oil dangote refinery in Lekki, Nigeria is finally scheduled to come on stream in 2021, while the full. Operations at the refinery is expected to hit its full capacity by middle of 2021, This was disclosed by Devakumar Edwin, a group executive director at Dangote Industries Ltd. During an exclusive interview at a conference recently held in Lagos. Dangote Industries Ltd owned by a Nigeria businessman Aliko Dangote unveiled its plans in constructing this biggest refinery ever built in the sub Sahara Africa in 2013. According to the African richest man, the Dangote refinery is projected to gulp a whopping $9 billion of which $3.3 billion as announced by the Dangote chief executive officer has already been secured while the remaining project funds will be source via
commercial loans. The refinery which was expected to start production in 2016 was delayed owing to shifting of its location to Lekki. Major structural construction started in 2017 and was proclaimed by the company that the process equipment will be completely
installed in late 2019 sequel to its commissioning in early 2020.
The refinery is situated on a 6,180 acres (2,500 hectares) site at the
Lekki Free Zone, Lekki, Lagos State.It will process about 650,000 barrels
of crude oil daily, transported via pipelines from oil fields in the Niger
Delta, where natural gas will also be sourced to supply the fertilizer factory and be used in electrical generation for the refinery complex.
The project is expected to cost up to $15 billion in total, with $10 billion
invested in the refinery, $2.5 billion in the fertilizer factory, and $2.5 billion in pipeline infrastructure. With a single crude oil distillation unit,
the refinery will be the largest single train refinery in the world. At full
production, the facility will be able to produce 50,000,000 litres (13,000,000 US gal) of gasoline and 17,000,000 litres (4,500,000 US gal) of diesel daily. This near commissioning of Dangote refinery is being heralded by The Nigeria government and the prospective consumers as succor to the perennial products scarcity and a leverage to the financial burden bedeviling the African highest producer of crude oil who depends on huge importation of these products forits domestic consumption.