Less than three years after overcoming surging costs, swampy terrain and inadequate infrastructure to launch Africa's biggest oil refinery in Nigeria,-billionaire Aliko Dangote is set on replicating that project on the continent's opposite coast.
But the construction of his company's planned new 700 000 bbl/d Lamu refinery in Kenya promises to bring a whole new set of issues — not least where to secure crude supply in a country that, unlike oil-rich Nigeria, currently has no commercial output.
Plans are evolving quickly. Until April, discussions for Dangote's East African refinery were focused on Tanzania.
A month later, Dangote told the Financial Times he was leaning towards siting the plant in the Kenyan city of Mombasa, but in July, an executive said it would be built in Lamu, a deep-water port critical to the refinery's success.
The company will hold a groundbreaking ceremony at the end of this month, and hopes to complete the refinery by 2030. Aliko Dangote has said he expects it to cost $15-billion to $16-billion.
