Dangote Industries Limited has acquired 4,000 additional construction machines as it begins expanding its Lekki refinery from 650,000 barrels per day to 1.4 million barrels per day.
The latest acquisition brings the company’s construction equipment fleet to about 6,500 machines, including 330 cranes.
Group Vice President, Oil and Gas and Fertiliser, Devakumar Edwin, disclosed this on Friday during a briefing with editors after a tour of the refinery in Ibeju-Lekki, Lagos.
Edwin said the company initially purchased 2,563 pieces of construction equipment after Julius Berger and other contractors indicated they lacked the capacity to construct the refinery’s main factory buildings.
“We ended up buying 2,563 pieces of equipment. We became the second largest company in the world in terms of construction equipment. Today, we are the largest because of the expansion,” he said.
He explained that Dangote opted to purchase the equipment rather than rely entirely on foreign engineering, procurement and construction contractors because importing and later returning their machinery would have significantly increased project costs.
According to him, Julius Berger declined to construct the refinery’s main process buildings after reviewing the project drawings, citing inadequate capacity.
The company subsequently handled 43 of about 127 auxiliary structures, while Dangote developed its own construction capacity for the main project.
Edwin said the equipment strategy was also influenced by Nigeria’s infrastructure deficit, recalling that only two large cranes, each with a 150-tonne capacity, were available in the country when Dangote built its Apapa sugar refinery in 1998.
For the Lekki refinery, Dangote hired one of only two 5,000-tonne cranes available globally and purchased 330 cranes for its own operations.
He said infrastructure developed during the first phase of the refinery would be reused for the expansion, reducing the time and cost of the project.
The facilities include a 10-million-tonne-capacity granite quarry, 82 concrete batching plants, 203 transit mixers, a private port, an oxygen and welding-gas plant and accommodation facilities for up to 50,000 workers.
Edwin also disclosed that the refinery was already processing about 700,000 barrels of crude per day, above its original 650,000-bpd design capacity.
On the decision to execute the expansion through Dangote Projects Limited, Edwin said international contractors had proposed fees of about 12.5 per cent of the estimated $19.5bn project cost.
He said the proposed fees would have amounted to about $2.5bn, which the group rejected.
Instead, Dangote Projects Limited undertook the detailed engineering, procurement and contracting for the refinery, including direct purchase of equipment and materials.
Edwin said the refinery was designed around both domestic supply and exports, with 44 per cent of its output intended to meet Nigeria’s needs and 56 per cent for export.
He said about 95 per cent of the refinery’s output consists of high-value products, including petrol, diesel and jet fuel, while the remaining five per cent comprises industrial products such as carbon black feedstock.
The refinery was also designed to produce Euro 5 and Euro 6-grade petroleum products and process different crude grades from Africa and the United States.
Edwin said the expansion, alongside Dangote’s planned 700,000-bpd refinery in Kenya, would eventually give the group a combined refining capacity of about 2.1 million barrels per day.
The Lekki refinery remains the world’s largest single-train petroleum refinery, with the previous largest facility having a capacity of about 430,000 barrels per day.
- FG returns 50,000 Nigerian refugees in three years - September 21, 2026
- Dangote adds 4,000 machines for refinery expansion - September 21, 2026
- Remi @66: I’d choose same road that led me to you — Tinubu - September 21, 2026
