Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals was commissioned on Monday by the Federal Government.
The refinery would start delivering refined products to the Nigerian market from July this year. The facicity has the capacity to achieve 650,000 barrels per day crude oil processing refinery.
Speaking at the event, the founder of the refinery, Dangote, said, “It is our firm commitment that we will replicate in this sector what we have actually achieved in the cement and fertiliser markets, while Nigeria transformed from being the largest importer of these crude products to a net exporter.”
He pointed out that the “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 also said the refinery plans to export to 53 African countries which depend on other countries for petroleum products.