‘Dangote refinery operations to create 2000 jobs for technicians’

The coming on stream of the Dangote Refinery and Petrochemicals is hopeful to address Nigeria’s unemployment crisis as the company plans to engage about 2000 personnel in the field of engineering only.

Group Executive Director, Strategy, Portfolio Development & Capital Projects, Dangote Industries Limited, Devakumar Edwin, who disclosed this while receiving the officials of Petroleum Trust Development Fund (PTDF), who paid a visit to the head office of the Dangote Group in Lagos, recently.

According to him, opportunities for thousands of indirect jobs are huge given that there is fertilizer and petrochemical complexes within the refinery.

He explained that the 650,000 barrels-per-day Dangote Refinery currently under construction is 50 per cent bigger than the current largest single train refinery in the world; and has the latest technology to challenge any such plant in Europe and everywhere.

Edwin, who also identified well-trained human capital as the most important aspect of any successful company, disclosed this during a chat with officials from the Petroleum Trust Development Fund on a visit to the Dangote Head Office in Lagos recently.

Giving an overview of the Dangote Refinery to the visiting Head, Press & External Relations, PTDF, Kalu Otise and Lawal Ibrahim of the same unit, the Dangote boss said “although most refineries abroad tend towards mass production of diesel, the Dangote Refinery is designed to produce gasoline more than diesel, which is unique to us.

Also, for every barrel of crude that goes in, we want to extract the maximum number of products to boost the return on investment. Our refinery products can be sold in any part of the world.”

He also noted that because of the technology deployed in the construction of the Dangote Refinery, the personnel had to be trained from scratch, with engineers sent to India and South Africa.

According to him, “From Nigeria, our people have gone throughout Africa and beyond for training. They are trained and equipped, they can do exceedingly well. In oil and gas, there is an advantage because there is already some level of expertise there.”

The PTDF saluted the entrepreneurial spirit of the Chairman of the company, Aliko Dangote and disclosed that ten engineers who trained at the PTDF academy are part of the workforce currently engaged at the refinery.