Dangote to Sell 500MW to Kenya Power from Planned 1,000MW Lamu Refinery Plant
Dangote made the offer on September 25 during President William Ruto’s tour of the Dangote Petroleum Refinery in Lekki, Lagos, four days before the pair were scheduled to break ground on the Kenyan project on September 30. “We are going to produce about 1,000 megawatts in Lamu out of petcoke, and we’ll have 500 megawatts to sell to the government of Kenya,” Dangote said, speaking alongside Ruto. Search option is now available at TUKO! Feel free to search the content on topics/people you enjoy reading about in the top right corner 😉
He added that the Lamu facility would be “actually double” the size of the power plant at his Nigerian refinery. Kenya Power at the centre of negotiations Ruto’s delegation proposed that KPLC acquire the surplus electricity through a power purchase agreement. The 500MW reserved for the refinery’s own operations and the adjacent Lamu Special Economic Zone would leave the remaining half available for injection into Kenya’s national grid, providing much-needed baseload power, electricity generated at a constant, steady rate regardless of weather conditions.
The plant was originally conceived as a 500MW captive facility serving refinery operations only. Kenya subsequently pressed Dangote Industries to double the installed capacity to 1,000MW. The expanded plant is expected to run on liquefied natural gas sourced from Tanzania, a development that could open a new commercial channel for Tanzanian gas exports and potentially revive the long-stalled Kenya-Tanzania gas pipeline agreement reached in 2021. The offer addresses a structural weakness in Kenya’s power supply.
The country depends heavily on hydropower, which underperforms during droughts, and has invested significantly in wind and solar capacity, both of which are intermittent.
