N3.4 trn Dangote refinery ready in 2019
The $12 billion (N3.4 trillion) oil refinery by Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, will become operational by 2019.
Dangote told Reuters in Lagos at the weekend that the refinery would have a capacity of 650,000 barrels a day.
The refinery, when completed, will boost the efforts of the Federal
Government to end the importation of refined petroleum products by
2019.
Currently, over 90 percent of refined petroleum products are imported
despite the fact that about 445, 000 barrels per day are reserved by the
Federal Government for local refineries.
The four refineries owned by the Federal Government’s Nigerian
National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) have remained comatose despite
billions of Naira spent on reviving them.
Attacks on crude pipelines to the refineries in Kaduna, Warri and
Port Harcourt have further hampered efforts to boost local refining.
But Dangote said: “It will be ready in the first quarter of 2019.
Mechanical completion will be at the end of 2018 but we will start
producing in 2019.”
Dangote said the plant, which will include a $2 billion fertilizer
unit, was being funded through “loans, export credit agencies and our
own equity”.
Some $3.25 billion had come from local and foreign banks, while the
Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) had also chipped in. The IFC, the private
sector arm of the World Bank, has lent $150 million for the project.
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