OSBC Osun State Broadcasting Corporation
The Chairman of Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, has said that the first tranche of petroleum products from the refinery will be supplied to the market before the end of July.
Speaking at the commissioning of the integrated refinery project located in the Lekki free trade zone area of Lagos State on Monday, Dangote described it as a milestone in a new and exciting trajectory for Nigeria’s oil and gas downstream sector.
He said, “It is our firm commitment that we will replicate in this sector what we have actually achieved in the cement and fertilizer markets while Nigeria transformed from being the largest importer of these crude products to a net exporter,” he said.
“Our first goal is to ramp up projections of various production to ensure that within this year, we are able to fully satisfy our nation’s demand for higher quality products to enable us to eliminate the tragedy of import dependency and stop, once and for all, the dumping in our market of toxic substandard petroleum products.
“Our first products will be in the market before the end of July, beginning of August this year.”
He added that the refinery will run at the highest capacity utilisation and the highest efficiency to enable the refinery to export competitively to other markets.
The PUNCH reports the refinery set up to refine 650,000 barrels of crude oil per day transforms crude oil into different petroleum products such as diesel, gasoline, jet fuel and kerosene.
The refinery will produce Euro-V quality gasoline and diesel, as well as jet fuel and polypropylene.
The firm stated that the facility was designed to process a large variety of crudes, including many African crudes, some Middle Eastern crudes, and US (United States) Light Tight Oil.