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Chairman of Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, has said that his oil refinery coming on stream in 2017, will have the capacity to process 650,000 barrels of crude oil per day.
Speaking through his Group Executive Director, Mr. Devakumar Edwin on Sunday, Dangote said that though the initial plan was to have 450,000bpd refining capacity, he had since gone back to the drawing board to enlarge the plant.
He said the present situation where the country produces crude oil but goes abroad to buy refined products is unacceptable.
The company’s Executive Director, Stakeholders Management and Corporate Communications, Mr. Mansur Ahmed, was also quoted as saying: “The entire petrochemical industry is history. Nobody has started with a 3.6-million-tonne capacity anywhere in the world.
“We are doing two million tonnes of polypropylene and 1.6 tonnes of polythene, which is approximately 3.6 million tonnes and is a huge petrochemical complex.”
While giving the hope that the demand for petroleum products would increase, he said :“The OPEC estimates project that demand in Africa is expected to grow annually at around 1.7 per cent over the next 25 years. With the current state of our refineries, all of this additional demand may have to be imported from outside the continent if urgent steps are not taken to boost African supply”.