Africa’s largest refinery says petrol imports are taking 43% of Nigeria’s market, forcing its $20 billion refinery to export surplus fuel

Africa’s largest oil refinery says rising petrol imports into its home market are forcing it to send more of its production abroad, adding a new twist to Nigeria’s rapidly changing fuel trade.

• Dangote Refinery says rising petrol imports are forcing it to export more fuel as domestic demand becomes harder to predict.
• Imports supplied 43% of Nigeria’s petrol in July, up sharply from about 12% in May.
• The refinery says excess inventory is increasingly being sold overseas rather than stored amid competition from imports.
• The development comes as Nigeria’s refined-fuel exports surge, with Dangote driving much of the increase.

The Dangote Petroleum Refinery said significant volumes of imported petrol entering Nigeria have made domestic demand increasingly difficult to predict, leaving the $20 billion facility with excess inventory that it must either store or sell overseas.

The company said imported Premium Motor Spirit, commonly known as petrol, accounted for about 43% of Nigeria’s supply in July. Official figures support that estimate.

Data from the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority show imports averaged 19.7 million litres per day in July, while total petrol supply stood at 45.5 million litres per day.

That means imports accounted for roughly 43.3% of supply during the month. Domestic refineries supplied the remaining 25.8 million litres per day.

The refinery said the growing presence of imported petrol has complicated production planning and inventory management.

As a result, it has increasingly exported products that cannot be absorbed by the domestic market rather than continue carrying the costs of storing and financing excess inventory.

The company maintained that the exports should not be interpreted as an inability or unwillingness to supply Nigeria.

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Instead, it described them as a commercial response to the amount of imported fuel competing for customers in its home market.

Imports make a comeback

The latest figures reveal how quickly Nigeria’s petrol supply balance has changed.

In May, imported petrol averaged just 5.9 million litres per day, accounting for about 12% of total supply.

Domestic sources provided 41.5 million litres per day, or almost 88%. The balance shifted dramatically the following month.

Imports jumped to 18.1 million litres per day in June, an increase of more than 200% from May, while domestic supply dropped to 32.5 million litres per day.

By July, imports had risen further to 19.7 million litres per day as domestic supply declined again to 25.8 million litres.

The development marks a reversal from earlier in the year when Nigeria appeared to be moving rapidly towards eliminating petrol imports.

Regulators stopped issuing petrol import licences in February after determining that domestic production was sufficient to meet demand.

At the time, Dangote alone was supplying about 36.5 million litres of petrol per day.

Under Nigeria’s Petroleum Industry Act, imports are intended to cover gaps when domestic refiners cannot adequately meet national demand.

The resurgence of imports therefore revives a long-running dispute over the appropriate balance between protecting billions of dollars invested in local refining and maintaining competition in Nigeria’s deregulated fuel market.

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Nigeria exports more fuel even as petrol imports rise

The dispute comes at a particularly significant moment for Nigeria’s petroleum industry.

Just two days before Dangote’s latest statement, the US Energy Information Administration said Nigeria’s seaborne petroleum product exports had increased more than sevenfold since 2023, driven largely by production from the Dangote refinery.

Nigeria exported an average of 350,000 barrels of petroleum products per day during the second quarter of 2026, compared with just 46,000 barrels per day in 2023.

Overall seaborne petroleum product shipments, including supplies moved between Nigerian ports, reached 561,000 barrels per day.

At the same time, Nigeria’s seaborne petroleum product imports have fallen substantially from nearly 400,000 barrels per day in 2023 to less than 130,000 barrels per day in the second quarter of this year.

The EIA said the refinery had made Nigeria more self-sufficient in refined petroleum products while increasing supplies available to international markets.

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Europe received about 130,000 barrels per day of Nigerian petroleum product exports during the second quarter, more than three times the 40,000 barrels per day recorded in 2025.

Shipments to other African countries reached nearly 120,000 barrels per day.

Dangote’s latest statement now provides another explanation for why some of that production is heading overseas.

The refinery says it has enough capacity to satisfy Nigeria’s petrol requirements but cannot indefinitely maintain inventories when imported products are competing for a substantial share of domestic demand.

A $20 billion refinery caught between imports and exports

The situation represents a remarkable reversal for Nigeria. For decades, Africa’s largest crude oil producer exported crude while depending heavily on foreign refineries for petrol and other petroleum products.

The arrival of Dangote’s refinery was expected to change that equation.

The facility began operations in 2024 with an initial crude-processing capacity of 650,000 barrels per day. Maintenance and expansion completed in February 2026 increased capacity to about 700,000 barrels per day, according to the EIA.

Dangote has previously said the refinery could supply up to 65 million litres of petrol daily to Nigeria while exporting another 15 million to 20 million litres.

The refinery now plans to double its capacity by adding another 750,000-barrel-per-day crude distillation unit by 2028. But the company is simultaneously fighting challenges on both sides of its operations.

While it complains about imported petrol competing with its products in Nigeria, it has also struggled to secure all the Nigerian crude it needs at prices it considers commercially competitive.

Chief executive David Bird told Reuters this week that imported crude currently accounts for roughly 30% to 40% of the refinery’s intake. That leaves Africa’s largest refinery in an unusual position.

It is importing part of the crude needed to keep its massive processing units running, while Nigeria continues importing some of the petrol the refinery produces, and growing volumes of Nigerian refined products are being shipped to customers elsewhere in Africa and Europe.

For Dangote, the argument is that more of that fuel could remain at home if imported petrol were not taking such a large share of its domestic market.