Industry players in the petroleum sector have welcomed the Dangote Refinery, which is set to come on board by the end of 2020. The news of the largest single stream petroleum refinery in Africa was announced at the just-ended Ghana International Petroleum Conference (Ghipcon 2018), organised at the Kempinski Gold Coast Hotel.

Participants at the conference, from various countries across the globe, were eager to know how they could key in for supplies into the 650,000 barrels per day refinery, that is preparing to take the continent by storm.

The Technical Adviser to the President/CE Dangote Group on Refinery and Petrochemical matters, and Special Guest Speaker at the event, Babajide Soyode, expressed his delight at the pace of construction works.

He noted that Alhaji Aliko Dangote will always do his best in whatever sector of the economy he ventures into, and that is why this refinery will be completed to specifically meet the needs of Nigeria, West Africa and the entire continent.

Mr. Soyode believes the support of all Africans to the completion of the project is needed, as the benefits are enormous to the entire continent, not only by the supply of petroleum products, but also by creating thousands of jobs.

The Special Guest of Honour at the conference, President Nana Akufo-Addo, who was represented by Vice President Alhaji Mahamudu Bawumia, was given a tour of the Dangote Refinery exhibition at Ghipcon, where work done was presented to him and the Minister for Energy, Boakye Agyarko.

The Vice President, and other guests were amazed by the sheer size of the project and work done so far. Vice President Bawumia commended Alhaji Aliko Dangote on the massive project, which is 100% privately funded.

He expressed the hope that Ghana would stand to benefit from the project when completed.

On his part, the Minister for Energy Mr Agyarko, lauded the efforts of Africa’s richest man in trying to meet the needs of the people.

He noted that projects such as this is what Africa needs to develop, and that Ghana is ready to fully support Aliko achieve his objectives of building a petrochemical plant to meet the energy needs of Ghana and the rest of Africa.

The completion of the project would culminate in the integration of the downstream industries, lower cost of business, and reduce the prices of petroleum products across the sub-region.

Ghana is said to have a favourable petroleum market environment, and investments in infrastructure such as oil jetties, pipelines and distribution infrastructure, refineries and gas processing plants, storage and loading gantries are welcome.

In addition to the refinery, the Group is also building the largest sub-sea pipeline infrastructure in any country in the world, with a length of 1,100 kilometres, to handle three billion SCF of gas per day.

There is also the plan to construct a 570 MW power plant in this complex. The gas from the pipeline will augment domestic natural gas supply, and it is estimated that an additional 12,000MW of power generation can be added to the grid with the additional gas from the Dangote system.