Aliko Dangote is considering Kenya as the preferred location for a proposed 650,000 barrels-per-day oil refinery in East Africa, after a previous push to build it in Tanzania.
Dangote, who is Africa’s richest man, told the Financial Times in an interview that he was leaning towards the Kenyan coastal city of Mombasa due to its port advantages and stronger market potential.
The proposed refinery, estimated to cost between $15bn and $17bn, comes barely a year after the full operational take-off of Dangote’s 650,000 barrels-per-day refinery in Lagos, currently regarded as the world’s largest single-train refinery.
According to the report, the planned East African refinery would process crude from Uganda and other global suppliers, while helping to reduce the region’s dependence on imported petroleum products.
“Aliko Dangote, Africa’s wealthiest industrialist, is eyeing Kenya as the site of a huge 650,000-barrel-a-day oil refinery he intends to build in East Africa, he told the FT, after questions over a previous push to build it in Tanzania.”
He compared Kenya’s port to Tanga, the proposed Tanzanian site for the refinery to process oil from Uganda, and the open market. Dangote estimated it would cost $15bn–$17bn to build.
“I am leaning more towards Mombasa because Mombasa has a much larger, deeper port,” the report by Punch newspaper quoted Dangote as saying in the interview.
“Kenyans consume more. It’s a bigger economy,” he said, adding that crude oil for the refinery could be transported by ship and need not be located near a pipeline that will carry oil nearly 1,500km from Ugandan oilfields to the Tanzanian coast at Tanga.
The billionaire businessman also stressed that the success of the proposed refinery would depend largely on support from the Kenyan government. “The ball is in the hands of President Ruto. Whatever President Ruto says is what I’ll do,” he stated.
According to Dangote, for the East African refinery project to proceed, governments in the region must provide policy support and protection against unfair import competition.
“There is no refinery in the world that can survive without that protection,” he said.
It will be recalled that Dangote had at an infrastructure summit in Nairobi last month, said that he could replicate his 650,000-barrel-a-day Lekki-based refinery in East Africa, provided governments in the region supported the initiative.
GIK/APA