Nigeria's Dangote taps India’s EIL to double refining capacity to 1.4 million bpd

Nigeria’s Dangote Group has signed a new contract with Engineers India Ltd (EIL) to support the expansion of its refinery, aiming to double processing capacity to 1.4 million barrels per day (bpd) within the next three years, company chairman Aliko Dangote said at a press conference in Mumbai on Wednesday.

EIL, headquartered in New Delhi, earlier served as the project management consultant and handled engineering, procurement and construction management for the existing 650,000 bpd facility.

As part of ongoing operations, the refinery will temporarily shut its gasoline-producing residue fluid catalytic cracker (RFCC) for five weeks between December and January, Dangote said.


The refinery -- the largest in Africa -- has undergone multiple rounds of maintenance this year. The RFCC experienced an outage in August before being brought back online in October. “There is a little bit of design issue with it, which was rectified (during the outage),” Dangote said.

Alongside its refining expansion, the company is also preparing for a major scale-up in fertiliser production. Dangote said the group plans to increase its urea output to 12 million tonnes per year from the current 3 million tonnes, also within a three-year period.

With inputs from Reuters