Dangote Trains 150 Nigerian Engineers in Refinery Operation

• Dangote Trains 150 Nigerian Engineers in Refinery Operation

Dangote Oil Refinery Company has concluded a training programme for 150 young Nigerian engineers in refinery operations in preparation for the take-off of its Lagos refinery and petrochemical plant.

The company’s Director of Human Capital Management and Project Support, Mohan Kumar, said this at a news conference in Lagos while presenting 22 engineers of the set who just returned from Mumbai, India.

He said the training programme was a continuum as more engineers would be trained to work effectively in the fertilizer plant being built by the company.

The engineers, according to him, were trained at Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited in India in the management of the operations of the refinery, adding that the engineers had acquired fundamental practical knowledge in refinery operations with a strong bias for the Dangote refinery spec.

Kumar said, “The engineers are recruited and trained to witness the building of the refinery from scratch. They spent two months in classroom training and three months on the job training, that is on different operating refineries in India.

“The 22 engineers were trained by experts who had over 45 years experience in refinery operations, and the training became imperative due to the commitment of the Dangote Group to promote local content by developing indigenous capacity.

“The engineers are expected to also transfer the skills acquired to other Nigerians when the refinery takes off. The 22 engineers arrived from Bharat Petroleum Corporation, Mumbai in India, where the last set of 150 employees trained in various areas of petroleum and petrochemical refining.’’

Kumar hinted that another set of 600 engineers would be sent for training before the end of April as the refinery initiative remained a very critical project for the Dangote Group, targeting 780 Kilo Tonnes Per Annum of polypropylene, 500 KTPA of polyethylene, with the fertiliser project targeted producing three million tonnes of urea per annum.

“The refinery will also have the largest sub-sea pipeline infrastructure in the world with the capacity to handle three billion cubic metres of oil annually,” he said.

The Dangote refinery is expected to save Nigeria $12bn annual import of petroleum products and create 4,000 direct jobs, as well as reduce prices of petroleum products after completion.

The project covers an area estimated to be eight times bigger than the entire Victoria Island in Lagos, and is located at the Lekki Free Trade Zone, Lagos, on a vast land mass of 2,200 hectares.