…says 1.4mbpd expansion plan feasible in 3 years
Dangote Refinery has commenced discussion with the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPCL) with a view to receiving more crude supply under the naira-crude arrangement.
The newly appointed managing director and chief executive Officer (MD/CEO) of the refinery, David Bird, told the media on Wednesday that effort was ongoing to sustain production even while some section of the refinery is undergoing maintenance.
Bird said the refinery currently produced between 50 and 52 million litres a day and would position the facility to upscale production with the upgrade plan.
According to him, market volatility has made it difficult to fully determine domestic volume demand but said over one thousand trucks load daily at N699 per liter gantry price.
He assured that quality of petrol from the refinery would be maintained and affordability assured.
Speaking on plans to upgrade the refinery he said it was still ongoing and would be completed in the next three years.
He reconfirmed that the 650,000 b/d Dangote refinery would be expanded to 1.4mn b/d by 2028.
The company aims to add a second 750,000 b/d processing line at its site in Lagos, largely replicating the existing plant, which began commercial operations last year. Lessons from the first build and existing infrastructure will allow the second line to be delivered more quickly, he said.
A doubling of capacity was part of the original design, but the company opted to assess performance before committing to expansion. It has now decided to proceed with. the second line within three years, he said.
On the free delivery plan, Bird said it was still being worked out and would begin soon.
Bird, who was appointed as the refinery’s first standalone CEO, said the expansion timetable rests on two sets of parallel activities beginning immediately.
The company plans to place orders for long-lead procurement items, such as major equipment and process units, with the goal of completing those purchases in the first month of 2026. At the same time, site preparation and early civil works are set to begin before the end of this month.
“We’re doing two things in parallel,” Bird said. “Procurement starts immediately, and at the same time we’re beginning filling works and site preparation.”
He said one of the key advantages of the project was that most of the groundwork had already been done.
The land earmarked for the expansion had been reclaimed, raised and prepared in advance, eliminating a major source of delay typical in large industrial projects.
“If you look at the landscape, you can see that the land has already been reclaimed and raised by more than a meter compared with where it was in the past,” Bird said, crediting the foresight of Nigeria’s leadership. “All of that pre-investment has been done. None of the normal site-preparation timelines really apply here.”
Because of that early preparation, Bird said the refinery expected to see structural steel “coming out of the ground” as early as the end of this year, a milestone that would normally take much longer to reach on a greenfield site.
Dangote Refinery is central to Nigeria’s strategy to cut fuel imports, conserve foreign exchange and stabilise domestic fuel supply.
Once fully operational, the existing plant is expected to meet all of Nigeria’s petrol demand and export surplus products across West and Central Africa. An expansion would deepen that impact, potentially turning Nigeria into a major exporter of refined fuels.
Bird acknowledged that large-scale refinery projects globally have struggled to meet schedules and budgets, but said the combination of replication, early procurement and ready-to-build land gives Dangote Refinery a strong advantage.
“We are firmly of the belief that we can bring this expansion online within three years,” he said.
If achieved, the expansion would rank among the fastest large-scale refinery builds globally, underscoring Dangote Group’s ambition to position the facility not just as a national asset, but as a globally competitive refining hub.
SOURCE: LEADERSHIP NEWS PAPER
About The Author
