President Muhammadu Buhari has commissioned on Monday 22 may 2023, the Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemical Plant in Lekki Free Trade Zone, Ibeju-Lekki, Lagos. The project is Nigeria’s first privately owned crude oil refinery and the world’s largest single-train refinery.
The commissioning comes exactly one week before the end of the president’s second term as leader of Africa’s most populous country. It also comes 45 years after he – as federal commissioner of petroleum resources – completed and commissioned the state-owned 100,000 barrels per day Warri Refinery in Nigeria’s Niger-Delta. The Dangote Refinery has a capacity of 650,000 barrels per day of crude oil and 900,000 metric tons of polypropylene in a single-train. The single-train system allows for one integrated distillery system that can produce a variety of products.
The industrial complex is seven times the size of Victoria Island, Lagos.Generates 570MW electricity; all to be consumed by the project (except some reserved for redundancy purposes).It is the largest active single project ongoing in the world today.It is the 2nd largest refinery in the world.There are 45 bridges constructed within the industrial complex as part of the road network.The industrial city has 123 road networks.There are 125 control centers housing for various sub-units of the refinery & petrochemical complex.The industrial city has accommodation for 50,000 workers.There are 300,000 people working from around the world on this project.The project site has over 30,000 networks of underground pipes. All cables, pipes are buried underground.The underground cables for the entire industrial city will go round the world twice(that’s the scale of the cumulative armored cables length).
There are currently 40,000 containers on the site (both 20’ and 40’ boxes).The combined total storage capacity for the finished products is 4.2 billion litres.There are 300 cranes of various sizes acquired by the Dangote Group for the project (excluding cranes owned by contractors).There are 43 piling machines (dredgers) acquired by the Dangote Group for the projectThe Dangote Group brought into Nigeria, a 5,000 tons capacity crane; which is one of only two in the world specifically for installation of the crude oil separating unit as well as two other units (that particular crane was leased).Has the largest equipment fleet owned by a single company in Africa.250 million man-hours invested so far on the project.Fertilizer exports have commenced with the first bulk shipments to Brazil, US, etc.Fertilizer is also supplied to the local Nigerian market.
