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.