REVEALED! ENDLESS FUEL SAGA: WHY FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF NIGERIA IS RELYING HEAVILY ON DANGOTE REFINERY

“Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.” - Thomas Edison

BY CHIEF MIKE CERUTTI OSAGIE

Editor-In-Chief , World Leaders.Com

E: youngchief@yahoo.com

A lot has in recent time been said of the much talked about soon to be rolling Dangote refinery

It is a popular saying that to whom much is giving much is expected, such is the case with the story of Africa’s ricochets man, Alhaji Aliko Dangote and his new foray into the oil business

And as widely speculated, even Nations’ of Africa now look up to the man with Midas touch to make things happen, only last night The Federal Government revealed that they are heavily relying on Dangote refinery to fulfill its promise to Nigerians to end fuel importation by December 2019.

To this end, Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Mr. Ibe Kachikwu,

who visited the Dangote Oil Refinery site at Lekki Free Trade Zone, in Lagos, yesterday, said the government was ready to play its part as a responsible government to assist in making sure the project was completed before the scheduled date. The minister, who said he was overwhelmed by the dimension of the project, explained that the current government had always believed that the private sector held the ace in industrialization efforts of the government.

He noted that his belief had been reinforced by what the Dangote Group was doing. Said he: ‘’It is good to say that private sector is the answer to Nigerian’s problems with a project as big as this. The challenge I will give you today is that of time, I see your time for completion is 2019 December but I am sure you will understand my greed if I tell you that the refinery component of this project should come earlier than the set date. Dangote “I have made very firm commitment to Nigerians that I must stop the importation of petroleum products by 2019 and I am going to keep to it. It is absolutely important that we do this early and given the feat that we have achieved in terms of speed of construction, I urge you to do all within you to achieve its completion before the due date.

“I am sure His Excellency, President Muhammadu Buhari, will be absolutely enthused if he were to find himself, not only

crystallizing the policy position we have taken so far but also coming here himself to open a facility as big as this before the end of his first term. ‘’Whatever configurations your engineers have come up with, I urge that they go back to the drawing board and get me my refined products before your said date.” We’ll meet up with the challenge In his response to the government’s challenge, Dangote said he had accepted the challenge and would do all possible to achieve the feat. Dangote said: “On the honorable minister’s challenge, we are going to make it by the grace of God. I am sure the minister will support us to make sure that we meet his challenge.

“What the minister is trying to do is the best so far for our country. His version is that Nigeria should not think of exporting crude. You know the problem we have in Africa is that we only export raw materials, not finished goods. So he is saying that, look, we should all do this by adding value and I pray that even at 2.5 million barrels, we should not export much, in terms of the crude. “We will go back and see what to do to make this happen by fast tracking our processes since the Minister has assured of government’s

cooperation and support” Refinery to save Nigeria $13bn annually Earlier in his welcome address, Dangote said: “We will be adding value to our economy as all these projects will be creating about 4,000 direct and 145,000 indirect jobs. We will also save over $7.5 billion for Nigeria annually, through import substitution and generate an additional $5.5 billion per annum through exports of the refined petroleum products, fertilizer and petro chemicals. We envisage that these projects, which would cost over $18 billion, would be completed in 2019.”

He explained that his group was building the world’s largest single line refinery, petrochemical complex and the world’s second largest urea fertilizer plant. The refinery, according to him, will have the capacity to refine 650,000 barrels of crude oil per day. The petrochemical plant will produce 780 KTPA polypropylene, 500 KTPA of polyethylene; while the fertilizer project will produce 3.0 million metric tons per annum (mope) of urea. “In addition, we are also building the largest sub-sea pipeline infrastructure in any

country in the world, with a length of 1,100km, to handle 3 billion SCF of gas per day. We also plan to construct a 570 MW power plant in this complex. As a matter of fact, gas from our gas pipeline will augment the natural domestic gas supply and we estimate an additional 12,000MW of power generation can be added to the grid with the additional gas from our system.”