Dangote Petroleum Refinery Set To Start Production

The Dangote Refinery is an oil refinery owned by Aliko Dangote that was inaugurated on the 22nd of May 2023 in Lekki, Lagos, Nigeria. When in full operation, it is expected to have the capacity to process about 650,000 barrels per day of crude oil, making it the largest single-train refinery in the world. The investment is over 19 billion US dollars.

Aliko Dangote, a business man, unveiled early plans for the refinery in September 2013, when he announced that he had secured about $3.3 billion in financing the project. At the time, the refinery was estimated to cost about $9 billion, of which $3 billion would be invested by the Dangote Group and the remainder via commercial loans. Though he was to begin production in 2016, however, after a change in location to Lekki, the construction of the refinery did not begin until 2016 with excavation and infrastructure preparation, and the planned completion was pushed back to late 2018.

In July 2017, major structural construction began, and Dangote estimated that the refinery would be mechanically complete in late 2019 and commissioned in early 2020. An associated project at the site of the refinery, a urea fertilizer factory, was also scheduled to begin operation in late 2018 and produce about three million tons of urea annually. In 2018 the project was expected to cost up to $15 billion in total, with $10 billion invested in the refinery, $2.5 billion in the fertilizer factory, and $2.5 billion in pipeline infrastructure.

In July 2022, after some more setbacks, Dangote had to borrow 187 billion naira (about 442 million USD) at 12.75% resp. 13.5% p.a. to complete the refinery. Fitch Ratings noted that the refinery’s start date had been postponed three times in four years and feared diminished investor confidence if operations do not begin in 2023.

In January 2023, the completion of the refinery’s power plant was finally announced. It has now been inaugurated by the outgoing President Muhammadu Buhari, in Lekki, Lagos state, on Monday May 22, 2023.