Africa's richest man Aliko Dangote turns to exports as Nigeria's petrol imports triple

Nigeria's gasoline imports more than tripled in June as the Dangote refinery cut domestic supply and pushed a larger share of its output into export markets to earn hard currency.

The country brought in 18.1 million litres of gasoline a day last month, against 5.6 million litres a day in May, according to the monthly report of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority.

The refinery owned by Aliko Dangote, whose fortune Forbes estimates at $28.5 billion, supplied about 90 percent of Nigeria's gasoline in May, which means any shift in how it allocates output registers almost immediately in national import figures.

The company says it cannot get dollars

Dangote Industries has been explicit about why.

"We are exporting as much as possible," Devakumar Edwin, group vice president at the refinery, said in a written 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."

Edwin said the plant is receiving very little crude under the federal government's naira-for-crude arrangement, forcing it to buy a larger portion of its feedstock on the international market in hard currency while selling the resulting fuel domestically in naira.

Exports resolve the mismatch. Cargoes sold abroad settle in dollars, which is the currency the refinery needs to buy the next parcel of crude.

Spokespeople for the Central Bank of Nigeria and the state oil company did not respond to requests for comment.

A policy under strain

The naira-for-crude programme was introduced in 2024 to allow domestic crude sales in local currency and ease pressure on Nigeria's foreign exchange reserves, which have repeatedly weighed on the naira. The June import numbers raise questions about whether it is functioning as designed.

Ikemesit Effiong, senior partner and head of research at SBM Intelligence, said the state oil company's failure to supply sufficient crude could compel the refinery to import crude and sell refined products abroad, leaving the domestic market underserved and creating fresh incentives for imports.

Nigeria is Africa's largest oil producer and depends on the 700,000 barrel-a-day plant, the biggest refinery on the continent, as its principal source of fuel.

Four months from a historic first

The reversal is sharp against where the country stood in the spring.

In March, Nigerian gasoline exports reached about 55,000 barrels a day while imports fell to roughly 40,000 barrels a day, the lowest level in a decade. The country became a net exporter of gasoline for the first time in its history, a milestone reached after decades of shipping crude abroad and buying refined fuel back at a premium.

By June, imports had tripled.

The refinery's export position had also become significant beyond Nigeria. It emerged as one of the main incremental suppliers into the Atlantic Basin, particularly of jet fuel to Europe, as tension across the Middle East tightened flows from Gulf producers. South Africa, Ghana and Kenya have all approached the plant about supply, and earlier in the year it shipped about 456,000 tonnes of refined products to Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Tanzania, Ghana and Togo.

Pressure at the pump

The currency squeeze surfaced publicly this month when the refinery suspended naira-denominated truck loading and moved to dollar pricing, a decision that pushed independent marketers toward private depots. Loading in naira resumed on Wednesday at ₦1,215 a litre ($0.88), up 13.02 percent from ₦1,075 ($0.78). Ex-depot prices in Lagos had touched ₦1,275 ($0.92) during the suspension.

Output has since fallen for a separate reason. Commodity analytics firm Kpler reported that a fault involving the plant's flue gas steam generator triggered maintenance from July 10, cutting crude runs to between 350,000 and 400,000 barrels a day from 600,000 to 650,000 earlier in the year and pushing product exports to a three-month low.

Dangote announced in October that he intends to lift capacity to 1.4 million barrels a day, which would make the plant the largest in the world, and has signed a $400 million agreement with a Chinese machinery supplier to accelerate the work. He also plans to take the refinery public later this year.

The plant began operating in 2024 after eight years of construction, built on the argument that Nigeria should stop exporting crude only to import the fuel refined from it. Two years on, the country is importing more gasoline than it did before, and the reason is a shortage of dollars rather than a shortage of refining capacity.