MUMBAI: Hydrocarbon-focused public sector engineering, procurement and consulting major Engineers India (EIL) has secured “a multi-million dollar project” from the Nigerian petrochemicals major Dangote group under which the state-run consultancy will help the African company more than double its annual capacity in petroleum refining to 1.4 million bpd, and build a 12-million tonne petrochemical complex making it the world’s largest urea facility.
The MoU is an extension of EIL’s first order secured in 2018 and completed in 2024 under which it built a 6,50,000/bpd oil refinery for the same Lagos-headquartered Dangote group. The company won the order for a reported $139 million then.
“While the contract for the petrochem plant is worth $70 million to build a complex with 12 million tonne per annum, from the current 3 million tonne, the commercial details of the 1.2 million barrel per day refinery project, which we will design and execute, is being worked out. But I can tell you that the revenue from this for us will run into hundreds of millions of dollars,” EIL chairman and managing director Vartika Shukla told TNIE on the sidelines of the MoU signing here Wednesday.
Both the projects will be executed in three years, she added.She further said, “this is a strong affirmation of the trust reposed in EIL’s capabilities to deliver projects of exceptional scale and complexity. As we move into this next phase, we will bring its decades of experience, multidisciplinary strengths, and global execution model to support the Dangote group in creating one of the world’s most advanced and fully integrated refinery, petrochemical and fertilizer complexes.
“The proposed expansion to 1.4 million barrels per day is a project of global significance and will become the largest private refinery in the world at a single location, complemented by world’s largest fertilizer compex with 12 million tonne capacity,” Shukla added.
EIL, which reports to the petroleum & natural gas ministry is known for its proven strength across the entire project lifecycle—from conception to commissioning of oil & gas, refining, petrochemicals, fertilizers, metallurgy, infrastructure, and renewable energy sectors.
The Dangote group is Nigeria’s foremost multinational conglomerate and a dominant industrial force in the whole of West Africa having diversified interests spanning oil & gas, petrochemicals, fertilizers, cement, sugar, and food, and operates across 17 African countries.
Its flagship 650,000 barrels-per-day integrated refinery and petrochemical complex in the Lekki Free Zone which is among the largest single-train refineries globally and controls almost 65% of the oil products markets in the home country. Aliko Dangote, the founder and president of the Dangote Group, told TNIE that with the near doubling of the throughput, they will control the entire oil retail markets in Nigeria.
The Lekki refinery, engineered and executed by EIL, is among the world’s largest single-train refineries, producing Euro-V quality petrol, diesel, jet fuel, and polypropylene. Dangote is expanding its refining capacity from 6,50,000 bpd to 1.4 million bpd with a new PDH unit to increase the polypropene production from 8,30,000 tonnes to 2.4 million tonnes, which will make it the world’s largest urea producer.
Aliko Dangote said though his company has no direct trade relationships with any Indian firm for urea now but only through traders, once the capacity expansion is over, he will seek direct trade with Indian fertiliser companies. The expansion reinforces our mission to make Nigeria a regional hub for refined petroleum products and petrochemicals, he added. Explaining the $70 million contract awarded to EIL for the petchem project expansion, Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man and business mogul, further said on commissioning, this project will become the world’s largest hubs for nitrogenous fertilizers, comprising six ammonia–urea production trains.
EIL has been awarded the contract to provide project management consultancy (PMC) and engineering, procurement & construction management (EPCM) services for the expansion of the fertilizer complex in the Lekki Free Trade Zone. This major expansion includes the addition of four new fertilizer production trains producing 8 million tonnes of urea annually, significantly scaling up the complex’s capacity and technological sophistication. The existing refinery itself is the largest in Africa, Dangote said, adding both the refiner and petrochem expansion projects will be completed in three years.