The Senior General Manager, of Dangote Petrochemicals Ltd, a subsidiary of Dangote Group Madhav Kelkar has announced that its 650,000 bpd capacity petroleum refinery and fertilizer plant would come on stream by 2018.

According to him, the refinery will boost the country’s refining capacity and enhance industrialization.

Construction works is expected to be completed on the project by 2017 while refining operation would commence by 2018, Kelkar said adding that the projects would create job opportunities for Nigerians.

 “The 650,000 barrels per day capacity refinery will meet the 2018 deadline. As you can see, piling and land reclamation are going on. Sand filling is the most critical part of the project. A Belgium-based dredging company called Jande Nul is in charge of dredging and soil investigation. Assembly and coupling of equipment will take only a couple of months. I think we are making progress and I’m happy with what we have done so far. At the end of the day, every Nigerian will be very proud that we have the longest single train refinery in the world. That’s the vision of Dangote.’’ He told Leadership news

On completion of the project, Nigeria will be self sufficient in refining of crude oil. The petrochemical plant will produce 750,000 metric tonnes of polypropylene per annum while the fertilizer plant would produce 2.8 metric tonnes of Urea and Ammonia, Kelkar explained.