By Staff Reporter: Rukevwe Odeh

Dangote Industries Limited has acquired an additional 4,000 construction machines as part of its ongoing expansion of the Dangote Petroleum Refinery in Lagos.

The latest procurement has increased the company’s construction equipment fleet to approximately 6,500 units, including 330 cranes, as the group works to raise the refinery’s planned processing capacity from 650,000 barrels of crude oil per day to 1.4 million barrels per day.

The Group Vice President, Oil and Gas and Fertiliser, Devakumar Edwin, disclosed this during a briefing with editors following a tour of the refinery in Ibeju-Lekki, Lagos.

Edwin explained that Dangote initially acquired 2,563 pieces of construction equipment after some contractors indicated that they lacked the capacity required to handle the refinery’s major factory structures.

He said the group subsequently decided to build its own substantial equipment fleet rather than depend entirely on foreign engineering, procurement and construction contractors.

According to him, bringing foreign contractors and their machinery into Nigeria would have involved additional mobilisation and demobilisation expenses, with equipment depreciation potentially increasing the overall project cost.

Edwin said the company’s approach was also influenced by the limited availability of heavy construction equipment in Nigeria.

He recalled that when Dangote constructed its Apapa sugar refinery in 1998, only two large cranes with a lifting capacity of about 150 tonnes were available in the country.

For the Lekki refinery project, Dangote has since developed a much larger equipment base, including 330 cranes, to support construction activities.

The executive also disclosed that a significant portion of the infrastructure established during the first phase of the refinery would be reused for the expansion.

These facilities include a granite quarry with a stated capacity of 10 million tonnes, 82 concrete batching plants, 203 transit mixers, a private port, an oxygen and welding-gas plant and accommodation facilities capable of housing up to 50,000 workers.

Edwin further revealed that the refinery, originally designed for 650,000 barrels per day, was operating at about 700,000 barrels per day at the time of the briefing.

He said Dangote also opted to execute the expansion through its own project company after international contractors reportedly proposed fees amounting to about 12.5 per cent of an estimated $19.5 billion project cost.

That figure, according to Edwin, would have translated into approximately $2.5 billion in contractor fees.

Instead, Dangote Projects Limited was tasked with handling detailed engineering, procurement and the coordination of contractors involved in the project.

The refinery was designed to serve both the Nigerian market and international customers, with the company previously indicating that part of its output would be allocated to domestic consumption while the remainder would be exported.

The planned expansion to 1.4 million barrels per day is expected to significantly increase the refinery’s production capacity and strengthen Dangote Industries’ refining operations.

Edwin also said the group’s overall refining capacity could eventually rise to about 2.1 million barrels per day when the Lekki expansion is combined with the planned 700,000-barrel-per-day refinery project in Kenya.

The Dangote refinery is currently described by the company as the world’s largest single-train petroleum refinery.