Chairman of Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, has announced that the Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals is expected to become the world’s largest refinery by 2028 following a planned expansion of the facility.
Dangote disclosed this on Monday during the preliminary signing ceremony for the proposed initial public offering (IPO) of the refinery.
The 700,000-barrels-per-day facility is currently Africa’s largest refinery and the world’s largest single-train refinery. Dangote said the planned expansion would push the facility to the top position globally.
He described the IPO as a major milestone for Dangote Group, Nigeria and the African continent.
According to him, the refinery project, which began more than a decade ago, was made possible by the confidence of the company’s financial partners.
Dangote said some of the group’s bankers supported the project despite not having visited the refinery site or seen its operating licence at the initial stage.
He said the development demonstrated that ambitious projects could be achieved through determination and commitment.
“Today also shows that nothing is impossible for us to achieve once we are focused and determined,” Dangote said.
He added that Dangote Group’s Vision 2030 agenda was aimed at accelerating industrialisation across Africa, stressing that reliable energy supply was essential to achieving the objective.
“We have learned the hard way, and we cannot industrialise if we do not have the energy security,” he said.
Dangote said the group had therefore prioritised investments aimed at improving energy security in Nigeria while extending its industrialisation drive to other African countries.
He disclosed that expansion plans had been announced in countries including Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Namibia, saying the group’s investments were encouraging more entrepreneurs to participate in Africa’s industrial development.
On the proposed IPO, Dangote said ownership of the refinery’s shares would not be restricted to any particular category of investors.
“There is no segregation on who can own the shares,” he said, adding that the company wanted people across the continent to participate in the investment opportunity.
Refinery Expanding Global Reach
Also speaking at the event, Chief Executive Officer of Dangote Refinery, David Bird, said the facility was operating as a merchant refinery supplying petroleum products to Nigeria, West Africa and international markets.
Bird said the refinery had expanded its presence in overseas markets and had become the largest supplier of jet fuel to Europe.
He noted that the refinery had recorded strong performance in the past six months, helping to reduce the effects of supply disruptions linked to conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine.
According to him, the facility has the capacity to process different grades of crude oil and supply a wide range of international markets.
Bird described the 700,000-barrels-per-day plant as Africa’s largest refinery and one of the five or six largest refineries globally.
He said the proposed expansion had already gone through the sponsorship, engineering and procurement stages, leaving construction as the major outstanding phase.
“This is now just a construction exercise that we believe we can deliver by 2028 to make the Dangote refinery the largest integrated refinery and petrochemical complex on the planet,” Bird said.
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