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Efforts by Nigeria’s 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.
A source at the refinery confirmed to THISDAY Saturday night that the refinery has been completed with pre-inauguration tests ongoing.
He disclosed that President Buhari would inaugurate the plant on Monday, May 22.
Dangote Industries Limited had earlier hinted that the inauguration of the refinery in Lagos would take place before the end of the tenure of President Buhari on May 29, 2023.
The Group Chief Branding and Communications Officer of Dangote Industries Limited, Mr. Anthony Chiejina, had in a statement debunked reports that the refinery was among the projects scheduled for inaugurated by Buhari during his visit to Lagos in January.
“However, our refinery will be commissioned before President Muhammadu Buhari formally leaves office in May 2023, and the public will be duly informed and invited to the epic event,” the company reportedly said in the statement.
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 the biggest refinery in Africa and also the biggest single-train refinery in the world.
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.
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