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Dulue Mbachu

As the energy shock unleashed by tensions in the Middle East rippled through Africa, a massive oil refinery in Nigeria’s biggest city of Lagos, owned by Africa’s wealthiest man, came to the rescue.
Running at its full capacity of 650,000 barrels per day, the world’s biggest single-train refinery supplied fuel to many African countries that usually relied on imports through the Strait of Hormuz, from Senegal in the west to Mozambique in the southeast.
Built at a cost of about US$20 billion, Dangote Petroleum Refinery’s eight-year journey from construction to production was made possible by cost-efficient Chinese engineering, procurement and construction contractors, according to Aliko Dangote, the refinery’s founder and chairman as well as Africa’s wealthiest person.
“The case between Africa and China is like where everybody abandoned you and somebody tells you, ‘Fine, you know what, let us partner with you’,” Dangote told a conference of the Africa Finance Corporation in the Kenyan capital Nairobi in April.
“We will get credit lines from China and deliver on time.”

Dangote Petroleum Refinery now plans to expand its refining capacity to 1.4 million barrels per day. In February, it signed a US$400 million deal with China’s XCMG Construction Machinery to start the expansion.
State-owned China National Chemical Engineering played a vital role implementing a US$520 million contract that covered large-scale engineering and construction, creating the original refinery’s framework.
Meanwhile, Hangxiao Steel Structure supplied about 150,000 tonnes of prefabricated steel assembled for construction.
Even more crucial was Beijing-based oil-and-gas company Sinopec’s manufacture and deployment of the world’s largest atmospheric distillation tower, enabling the refinery to process its maximum of 650,000 barrels per day.
The tower made Dangote the biggest single-train refinery in the world at the time of its installation, according to Sinopec.
Chinese companies dominated the refinery’s construction because the world’s second-biggest economy had by then become a leader in heavy industry, displacing regional rivals in South Korea and Japan as well as those farther afield in Europe and America, according to Dan Kunle of DDK Business Strategy Limited, a Nigerian advisory firm.
They achieved the feat with lower costs, faster delivery times and good quality work, Kunle said.
“When you place an order from Germany or the US, they will give you 24 months to deliver,” he said. “If you place the order with Chinese companies, they will give you six to 10 months to deliver, and they will deliver good quality.”
Upon completing the refinery, Dangote said, his company needed to buy more than 10,000 distribution trucks powered by compressed natural gas.
It had a choice of either waiting a year and a half to get the supply from the US or choosing a shorter waiting time with a Chinese supplier. He said a Chinese company delivered 10,250 trucks in seven months.


In March, Nigeria was a net exporter of refined petroleum products – a first in the country’s history. The milestone was driven by Dangote Petroleum Refinery’s full operations in 2024 and its reaching full capacity earlier this year.
Senegal, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo and Cameroon were among the countries in West Africa to have received fuel supplied from the refinery.
Tanzania and Mozambique in the eastern part of Africa also received fuel cargoes, with other countries putting in orders.
And with increased fertiliser shipments, the refinery, which produces 3 million tonnes of urea fertiliser a year, is also helping African countries fill the supply crunch caused by the Strait of Hormuz’s effective blockade amid the US-Israel war on Iran.
Major recipients of its urea fertiliser include Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Ghana, Tanzania and Togo.
While the company in the past mainly shipped fertiliser to South America, it has shown a readiness to boost supplies to countries in Africa’s eastern, western and central regions.
Using the template that worked in Nigeria, Dangote said he was in discussions with some East African governments to build another refinery with the same capacity as the Lagos operation.
He identified the coastal Tanzanian city of Tanga as a potential site to process crude oil from several countries in the region.
In March, the Dangote Group, parent company of Dangote Petroleum Refinery, signed a US$4.2 billion natural gas supply deal with Chinese energy conglomerate GCL Group. The gas will fuel a fertiliser plant in Ethiopia, similar to the one Dangote has in Lagos.


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Nigeria has turned into a net exporter of refined petroleum products amid the energy shock unleashed by the US-Israel war on Iran


Nigeria has turned into a net exporter of refined petroleum products amid the energy shock unleashed by the US-Israel war on Iran.


Fuelling a continent: how China’s engineering prowess built Africa’s biggest oil refinery

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Nigeria has turned into a net exporter of refined petroleum products amid the energy shock unleashed by the US-Israel war on Iran

Nigeria has turned into a net exporter of refined petroleum products amid the energy shock unleashed by the US-Israel war on Iran