Alhaji Aliko Dangote, President of Dangote Group, says the Dangote Refinery and Fertiliser projects will come on stream before the end of third quarter of this year.

He said this when Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, President of the African Development Bank (AfDB) led a delegation of the bank to the project site in Lagos.

“The refinery will commence operation by the third quarter of 2022. On the mechanical completion, we are almost finished but we have started hydro testing, almost 70 per cent gone, hopefully before the end of Q3 operation will commence,” Dangote said.

Group Executive Director, Strategy, Portfolio Development & Capital Projects, Dangote Industries Limited, Devakumar Edwin, said the refinery complex, which includes a refinery, petrochemical plant, a fertiliser plant and a subsea pipeline project, is the largest single-train refinery in the world.

Edwin stated that the 650,000 barrels-per-day refinery would stimulate economic development in Nigeria.

According to him, Dangote Petroleum Refinery can meet 100 per cent of the Nigerian requirement of all liquid products (Gasoline, Diesel, Kerosene and Aviation Jet), and also have surplus of each of these products for export.

He stated that this would create a market for $11 billion per annum of Nigerian crude and foreign exchange savings/earnings $9.9 billion.

“We have impacted on job creation with 3,580 Nigerian personnel on site, excluding employment by the various contractors and subcontractors at the site,” he noted.

Commending Dangote for the initiative, the AfDB President said,“One of the things I admire the most about Alhaji Dangote is that, he actually believes in Nigeria, and he invests his money in Nigeria. He believes in Africa and invests in Africa. Nobody could invest the type of billions of dollars that is here, unless the person not only has the vision but also the commitment and passion for his country. We are extremely proud of you and of your commitment to the continent.

“I am completely blown away with what I saw here today. I can’t believe what I saw. This project will reverse the huge sum the nation spends on foreign exchange. When you look at how much we import, it is about $57 billion worth of different products and we export only about $50.4 billion, so we have to balance that with about $7 billion and talking to them here, they showed us that they can have a domestic market of about $11 billion and that is an incredible market and that will save Nigeria about $9 billion, a year from importing petroleum products. So, this is huge for Nigeria and even for Africa as a continent,” he stated.

(Daily Trust)