Buhari to Commission Dangote Refinery May 22
The federal government’s efforts to make the country self-sufficient in crude oil refining to save scarce foreign cash utilised in petroleum product importation have received a boost as the 650,000 barrels per day capacity has been reached.
President Muhammadu Buhari will inaugurate the Dangote Refinery, the world’s largest single-train refinery, on May 22.
A source at the refinery verified to a media house, not energyplanets, Saturday night that the refinery has been completed and that pre-inauguration tests are already underway. He revealed that President Buhari would officially open the plant on Monday, May 22.
Dangote Industries Limited had previously intimated that the Lagos refinery might be inaugurated before President Buhari’s term ends on May 29, 2023.
Anthony Chiejina, Group Chief Branding and Communications Officer of Dangote Industries Limited, denied in a statement that the refinery was one of the projects set to be opened by Buhari during his visit to Lagos in January.
“However, before President Muhammadu Buhari formally leaves office in May 2023, our refinery will be commissioned, and the public will be duly informed and invited to the epic event,” the business reportedly said in a statement.
The Dangote Refinery complex, located in Lagos’ Lekki Free Zone, has a land area of around 2,635 hectares, which is more than the size of Lagos’ Victoria Island.
The refinery is Africa’s largest, as well as the world’s largest single-train refinery.In contrast to most large refineries, a single-train refinery uses an integrated distillation unit or one Crude Distillation Unit (CDU) to refine crude oil into various petroleum products.
Because of the refinery’s high capacity, its pipeline system is the greatest in the world, with 1,100 kilometers of pipeline capable of handling three billion Standard Cubic Feet per day (Scf/d) of gas.
According to a corporate report, the refinery features a 435MW power plant that can supply the complete power requirement of Ibadan Electricity Distribution corporate (IBEDC).
When completed, the refinery is projected to meet 100 percent of Nigeria’s requirement for all refined products while also having a surplus of each of these goods for export.
The refinery is designed to process Nigerian crude but can also process other crudes.It is a multibillion-dollar project that will establish a market for $21 billion in Nigerian crude oil per year.
