XCMG to commence work on Dangote refinery

By Uthman Salami

XCMG Construction Machinery has announced that the company will be working in collaboration with Dangote Industries Limited (DIL) on the largest oil refinery project in Africa.

According to the report from Energy Mix, the company revealed that the XCMG has deployed a team of 81 engineers and technicians to work on the construction of the Dangote Refinery.

The team is expected to provide end-to-end, round-the-clock service to facilitate more than 2,500 units of construction machinery equipment.

Built with an investment of nearly $35.38 billion, the Dangote Refinery project is estimated to worth the value of nearly $35.38 billion, spreads across an area of 250,000 hectares.

Only phases I and II of the project is expected to be completed by January next year and it is expected to produce gasoline and other petrochemical products such as polyethylene and polypropylene once completed.

The vice president who also serves as the general manager of the company, Jiansen Liu, disclosed that “the refined oil output of the Dangote Refinery will be able to fulfill the gasoline demand in Nigeria sufficiently, even meeting West Africa’s demand for refined oil, freeing Nigeria from its dependence on oil imports.”

Nigeria, the largest oil-producing country in Africa, currently has four operating oil refineries. However, due to equipment aging and poor maintenance, the plants are in a state of partial shutdowns with a combined daily output of less than 445,000 barrels, while the average daily consumption is approximately 40 million liters, 7 million liters less what is produced locally.

The XCMG team managed several challenges including the road conditions which required levelling with road rollers and graders and excavators to dig waterways for drainage every few days.