As the energy shock unleashed by tensions in the Middle East rippled through Africa, a massive oil refinery in Nigeria’s biggest city of Lagos, owned by Africa’s wealthiest man, came to the rescue.

Running at its full capacity of 650,000 barrels per day, the world’s biggest single-train refinery supplied fuel to many African countries that usually relied on imports through the Strait of Hormuz, from Senegal in the west to Mozambique in the southeast.

Built at a cost of about US$20 billion, Dangote Petroleum Refinery’s eight-year journey from construction to production was made possible by cost-efficient Chinese engineering, procurement and construction contractors, according to Aliko Dangote, the refinery’s founder and chairman as well as Africa’s wealthiest person.

“The case between Africa and China is like where everybody abandoned you and somebody tells you, ‘Fine, you know what, let us partner with you’,” Dangote told a conference of the Africa Finance Corporation in the Kenyan capital Nairobi in April.

“We will get credit lines from China and deliver on time.”

Dangote Petroleum Refinery now plans to expand its refining capacity to 1.4 million barrels per day. In February, it signed a US$400 million deal with China’s XCMG Construction Machinery to start the expansion.