How African billionaires Benedict Peters and Aliko Dangote became the biggest winners of the Hormuz crisis

The blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has reshuffled the global oil order, and satellite images analysed by German business magazine WirtschaftsWoche in cooperation with earth observation firm LiveEO show clearly who is winning. In West Africa, two Nigerian billionaires are at the centre of the story: Aliko Dangote, whose refinery near Lagos is running at near full capacity, and Benedict Peters, whose Aiteo produces the ultra-light Nembe crude that refineries across Europe and Asia are now desperate to get their hands on.

The timing could not be more favourable. The Hormuz blockade has removed approximately nine million barrels of crude oil from global supply daily, with an additional five million barrels of refined products including kerosene, gasoline and diesel also affected. That gap has sent buyers scrambling for alternatives, and Nigeria's light sweet crudes sit at the top of almost every shortlist.

Peters founded Aiteo in 2008. The company's production fields in the Niger Delta produce the Nembe crude variety, which refineries regard as a near-perfect replacement for the heavier, sulphur-rich grades that previously arrived from the Persian Gulf. Because Nembe crude requires almost no desulphurisation, refineries save enormous amounts of energy in the processing chain. Gasoline, diesel and kerosene can be refined from it almost directly. In the current environment, that efficiency advantage is worth an extraordinary commercial premium.

Nigeria has responded to the demand surge by pushing daily output from approximately 1.4 million barrels at the start of the conflict to between 1.7 and 1.8 million barrels, according to Punch, Nigeria's largest daily newspaper. Industry sources cited by WirtschaftsWoche say Nigeria could technically increase production further, to between 2.4 and three million barrels per day, a level the country achieved in earlier years when its infrastructure was operating at full capacity. The physical infrastructure to do it still exists. What stands in the way is a problem the Nigerian government has tolerated for decades: organised oil theft at industrial scale.

The satellite record on this is damning. Aiteo built a 97-kilometre pipeline after 2008 to carry Nembe crude from the Niger Delta to an Atlantic export terminal. The company was eventually forced to shut the pipeline down entirely after up to 50 percent of the oil being transported simply disappeared in transit, siphoned off by thieves with the alleged complicity of contractors, military personnel and an organised network that industry insiders describe as an oil mafia. The pipeline that satellite images show being laid in April 2009 is essentially invisible by December 2022. It is gone.

Peters' solution has been to abandon the pipeline entirely and move the crude by water instead. Since 2023, Aiteo has been using approximately 130-metre river tankers to carry Nembe crude to a floating storage and offloading vessel, the converted supertanker Galilean 7, anchored 27 kilometres offshore. Satellite images from April 2026 show regular traffic between the river loading points at Nembe Creek and the offshore terminal, with both small and large vessels visible mooring at the Galilean 7. The workaround is less efficient than a functioning pipeline. It is also considerably harder to steal from.

The wasted potential is significant. Industry sources told WirtschaftsWoche that if Nigeria could solve the theft problem through political will and enforcement, it could nearly double its production and export volumes. The country has the reserves. It has the fields. What it lacks is the willingness or capacity to stop an organised criminal network that costs the national economy billions of dollars annually and directly undermines the geopolitical opportunity the Hormuz crisis has handed it.

Dangote enters the picture on the refining side. His 650,000-barrel-per-day refinery complex near Lagos, which WirtschaftsWoche describes as the world's largest single fuel production line, has been ramping toward full capacity at precisely the moment global refined product markets are under the most strain they have experienced since the post-pandemic supply shock. In April, the refinery produced 54 million litres of gasoline, 24 million litres of diesel and 23 million litres of kerosene per day, according to data from Nigeria's NMDPRA regulator. A Swiss commodity trader quoted by WirtschaftsWoche said the refinery is a genuine game changer for West African consumers, making the region significantly more resilient to geopolitical shocks than it was in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine and sent energy prices spiralling.

Dangote is now also entering crude oil production directly, through an offshore field called Kalaekule in the Niger Delta. Satellite images from March 2026 show the production platform surrounded by support vessels, with oil pumping having begun in April.

The irony is that Dangote too has been targeted by the same oil mafia. In mid-April, the Nigerian army arrested 15 people who were apparently attempting to steal crude from a vessel supplying the refinery. Dangote has accused criminal networks of trying to sabotage his facility precisely because its domestic production capacity threatens to eliminate the import dependence on which their business model depends. The fight over Nigeria's oil is happening at every level simultaneously: at the pipeline, at the offshore terminal, at the refinery gate and now in the courts, where Dangote is suing the regulator over import licences he argues should no longer be necessary.

What the satellite images confirm, and what commodity traders are already pricing in, is that Nigeria is sitting on the most commercially valuable oil position on earth right now. Whether the country can convert that position into lasting economic gains, rather than watching the money leak out through theft, political dysfunction and regulatory conflict, is the question that neither the Hormuz crisis nor any satellite image can answer.