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 not being able to buy dollars. We need the dollars to buy our feedstock.”
Spokespeople for the central bank and the NNPC didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Nigeria is Africa’s biggest oil producer and relies on the 700 000 barrel-per-day Dangote refinery — the continent’s largest — as its main source of fuel.
The facility, owned by Nigerian tycoon Aliko Dangote, supplied 90% of the nation’s gasoline in May, according to the downstream regulator.
The naira-for-crude program was introduced in 2024 to ease pressure on Nigeria’s foreign-exchange reserves, which have consistently undermined the naira.
The Dangote Refinery has criticised the policy for not being implemented consistently, resulting in inadequate and unreliable local crude supply.
The Dangote plant is receiving “very little” petroleum products under the naira-for-crude deal, Edwin said.
Ikemesit Effiong, senior partner and head of research at SBM Intelligence, warned that Nigeria risks becoming reliant on imports it’s worked hard to reduce if the refinery continues to prioritise exports.
The NNPC’S failure to supply sufficient crude to Dangote may compel the refinery to bring in crude and sell it abroad, which will mean “an underserved market and an incentive to grow imports,” he said.
BLOOMBERG
