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The Dangote Oil Refinery, a $19-billion integrated refinery project owned by Africa’s wealthiest man Aliko Dangote, is now 90-percent complete and gearing for launch for Q3 2022.
With the current rate of work at the oil plant, which is located on a 6,180-acre (2,500-hectare) property in Lagos’s Lekki Free Zone, oil production will begin in September. This is consistent with Dangote’s prior comments made during a visit to the plant earlier this year.
The disclosure comes amid a fuel crisis in the country and a spike in energy product prices in the global market, as sanctions imposed on Russia as a result of its invasion of Ukraine continue to impact commodity prices, particularly oil, wheat and nickel.
When completed, the pipeline infrastructure of the refinery, which will be the world’s largest vertically integrated facility, will process 540,000 barrels of Nigerian crude per day in the first phase of its operational stage, increasing to 650,000 barrels per day afterward.
The refinery will also generate 4 million tonnes of jet fuel per day, 65 million liters of Premium Motor Spirits (petrol), 15 million liters of diesel and 3 billion standard cubic feet of gas.
The $19-billion refinery is projected to fulfil 100 percent of Nigeria’s demand for all refined products, as well as to have a surplus of each of these products for export, creating a market for $11 billion per year of Nigerian petroleum products.
The project has been hampered for a variety of reasons, including a lack of access to foreign currency, an ailing economy and, most recently, the COVID-19 epidemic, which interrupted supply chains and resulted in the delayed shipping of part of the refinery’s equipment.
Since the year began, the billionaire’s fortune has increased by more than $820 million, owing to a rise in the market value of his equity position in his primary company, Dangote Cement Plc.
Dangote is on track to earn a total of N293 billion ($704.1 million) in final dividends from his stake in Dangote Cement Plc, which represents the majority of the N340.81-billion ($819.2 million) final dividend distribution approved by the company’s board of directors at the end of the group’s 2021 fiscal year.
