Nigeria’s Dangote Group has signed a contract with Engineers India Ltd (EIL) to help double its petroleum refining capacity to 1.4 million barrels per day (bpd) within three years, founder Aliko Dangote announced at a press conference in Mumbai on Wednesday.

EIL, based in New Delhi, previously provided project management consultancy and engineering, procurement and construction management (EPCM) services for Dangote’s existing 650,000 bpd refinery — the largest in Africa.

Dangote also said the company will shut its gasoline-producing residue fluid catalytic cracker (RFCC) for five weeks between December and January. The unit suffered an outage in August and was restarted in October. “There was a minor design issue which was rectified during the outage,” he noted.

In addition to the refinery expansion, Dangote Group plans to increase its urea production capacity from 3 million tonnes per year to 12 million tonnes within three years, marking a major scale-up in Nigeria’s fertiliser sector.