Nigeria’s gasoline imports more than tripled last month as the country’s main refinery cut domestic supply and increasingly directed output toward export markets to maximise foreign-currency earnings.
The West African nation shipped in 18.1 million liters of the fuel per day in June, compared with 5.6 million liters in May, the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority said in a monthly report.
Dangote Petroleum Refinery & Petrochemicals Fze is prioritising selling fuel abroad because it’s struggled to access foreign exchange from the central bank as well as oil from the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Co under a naira-for-crude arrangement.
“We are exporting as much as possible,” Devakumar V. G. Edwin, group vice president at Dangote Refinery, said in text message response to questions.
“We are not able to get enough dollars from the central bank, and it doesn’t make any sense to be selling the products in naira and
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