Dangote Refinery To Come On Stream May 22nd As Buhari Set To Inuagurate Project

There are strong indications that President Muhammadu Buhari would on May 22nd officially inaugurate the long awaited Dangote Refinery, if the information revealed by the Special AAssistant to the President on Digital Communications, Basir Ahmad is anything to go by.

In a Twitter message on Sunday, Basir said, “the Efforts by the federal government to make the country self-sufficient in local refining of crude oil to save the scarce foreign exchange used in the importation of petroleum products have received a boost as the 650,000 barrels per day Dangote Refinery, the world’s largest single-train refinery, is set for inauguration on May 22 by President Muhammadu Buhari”.

While controversies regarding the removal of fuel subsidy raged in the country, Nigerians had been wondering what had become the fate of the Dangote refinery which was expected to have come on stream since 2019.

But feelers reaching DAILY INDEPENDENT also confirmed that the refinery has since been completed and had been undergoing pre-inauguration testing.

The refinery is set to complement the $2.5billion Dangote fertilizer plant which came on stream since 2022.

The Dangote Refinery complex, which is located in the Lekki Free Zone area of Lagos, covers a land area of approximately 2,635 hectares, which is larger than the size of Victoria Island in Lagos.

The refinery is believed to be the biggest refinery in Africa and also the biggest single-train refinery in the world.

Industry experts says a single-train refinery uses an integrated distillation unit or one Crude Distillation Unit (CDU) to refine crude oil into various petroleum products, as against the use of multiple distillation units by most big refineries.

Due to the large capacity of the refinery, its pipeline infrastructure is the largest anywhere in the world, with 1,100 kilometres to handle three billion Standard Cubic Feet per day (Scf/d) of gas.

According to a report by the company, the refinery has a 435MW-capacity power plant that is able to meet the total power requirement of Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company (IBEDC).On completion, the refinery is expected to meet 100 per cent of the Nigerian requirement of all refined products and also have a surplus of each of these products for export.

The refinery is designed to process Nigerian crude and can also process other crudes.It is a multi-billion dollar project that will create a market for $21 billion per annum of Nigerian crude oil.

Although the Buhari administration would come to its climax on May 29th this month, the government had pride itself as giving all the necessary support to make the refinery come on stream.

Recall that the Federal Government which had hinted of exiting fuel subsidy regime by June this year, had made a U-turn recently, insisting that it had suspended the idea to give suffering Nigerians and the incoming administration of Bola Ahmed Tinubu a soft landing, especially to settle down to the business of governance.

Tinubu is billed to be inuagurated on May 29, 2023 to pilot the affairs of the country for a four year tenure.