President of Dangote Industries Limited, Aliko Dangote has said the first product of the Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals will be in the market before the end of July, beginning of August this year
The business tycoon and billionaire revealed this while giving the welcome address at the inauguration of the 650,000 bpd refinery in Lagos State on Monday.
Beyond today’s ceremony, our first goal is to ramp up production of the various products to ensure that within this year, we’re able to fully satisfy our nation’s demand for higher quality products,” he said.
In his remarks, he thanked President Muhammadu Buhari for his support and the CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele for “moving mountains” in the course of the project.
According to him, the accomplishment is to enable Nigeria to eliminate what he described as the tragedy of import dependency and stop — “once and for all” — toxic, substandard petroleum products from being dumped in Nigeria’s market.
Beyond this, we intend to ensure that our plants are run at the highest capacity of utilisation and the highest efficiency to enable us to export competitively to other markets, especially in the ECOWAS and wider regions in which 53 countries out of 55 are dependent on imports to meet their petroleum products demand,” he added.
The refinery is expected to produce Premium Motor Spirit (petrol), diesel (Automotive Gas Oil), aviation jet fuel and Dual-Purpose Kerosene (DPK), among other refined products.
The refinery is expected to alter the international energy landscape and try to sanitise the country’s petroleum sector by ending the smuggling of imported petrol outside the country.
Presently, 80 per cent of fuel in Africa, from Cape Town to Dakar and other parts of the continent, are imported. This, the refinery is expected to address.