Thursday, October 22, 2015 08:23AM /Dangote Group

Dangote Refining and Petrochemical Plant will begin operation in 2018.

The plant has a refining capacity of 650,000 barrels per day (bpd), production of 750,000 metric tonnes of polypropylene per year and 2.8 million tonnes of fertilizer per annum, its management announced.

Construction work on the plant located in Lekki Free Trade Zone in Lagos State with other companies is progressing rapidly.The Senior General Manager, Civil and Structural, Dangote Refinery, MadharKelkar, said the entire project is situated on 2600 hectares of land.

According to him, work on land reclamation, piling and dredging is the most critical aspect of the entire project. He said: “This is the most critical aspect of the project, others including assembling and coupling together of equipment as well as installations to make up the plant, will just take a couple of months to complete.

“I think we have made very good progress and we should be happy with what we have done so far.”Kelkar said the Belgian company – Jon De Nul, which has a footprint all over the world, is handling the dredging work.

On what the nation stands to gain, he said: “I think every Nigerian would be very proud that Nigeria has the longest single train refinery in the world.“With this project, Nigeria will reach self-sufficiency in little or no time and the vision is not just to supply the domestic market but to export to neighbouring countries to be able to generate some foreign exchange (Forex) for the economy.

“Besides, we will be generating and saving a significant amount of forex, so it is a massive investment for Nigeria,” he added.The General Manager, Fertiliser, JaiswalAnureg, said the fertilizer section will have up to 2,500 workers as work progresses.

He said: “We have about 2,500 workers include those on chemical, electrical and instrumentation sections.“Already 200 workers are here and subsequently as the job progresses it will increase to 2,500.

“The fertilizer plant is the largest in the world and the capacity is 2.8 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) of urea and ammonia.”

He said the fertilizer company will have four power turbines of 40 megawatts (Mw) each, adding that the engineering work is 90 per cent completed while 80 per cent of procurement has been done.

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