Nigeria Fuel Imports Rebound Despite Dangote Output Rise
Nigeria’s petrol imports surged in June even as the Dangote refinery hit maximum capacity, threatening renewed pressure on the naira amid a legal battle over import licences.
Nigeria’s petrol imports tripled in June to 18.1 million litres per day, up from 5.9 million litres in May. The sharp reversal undermines months of government efforts to sell investors on energy independence, particularly since the Dangote refinery is now processing at full capacity.
The 650,000-barrel-a-day Dangote complex averaged 101.36 percent capacity utilisation in June, producing 39.1 million litres of petrol daily. Yet domestic supply dropped 22 percent to 32.5 million litres per day. The regulator, the NMDPRA, noted that Dangote exported an average of 3.4 million litres daily and held 410.7 million litres in inventory, explaining the gap between refinery output and local market receipts.
For currency markets, the import revival is a red flag. Nigeria spent much of 2024 and 2025 promoting Dangote as the mechanism to stop burning foreign exchange on fuel imports. The return of overseas cargoes threatens to pull dollars out of a foreign exchange market that has only recently stabilized.
Total daily petrol receipts, combining imports and local supply, rose 6.8 percent to 50.6 million litres. This marks a stark shift from February, when imports collapsed to just 3.0 million litres per day as Dangote initially displaced seaborne cargoes.
“Last year, everyone was told to plan around Dangote volumes. Now marketers are back on the phone with traders in Rotterdam and Antwerp,” said one Lagos-based independent fuel marketer. “We are back to bringing in cargoes because the domestic allocations have not been steady enough to plan around.”
Distribution bottlenecks are compounding the problem. Oyewole Akanni, zonal chairman of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, said price uncertainty has frozen fresh purchases. “Only a few marketers are buying products for now because of the uncertainty,” Akanni said, noting that some filling stations have temporarily closed.
Legal battle over market access
The supply volatility coincides with an escalating legal fight. Dangote Petroleum Refinery has filed a lawsuit against Nigeria’s attorney general to void import licences recently granted to the state oil firm NNPC and other marketers. The company argues these permits violate a prior court order meant to preserve the status quo, reviving a dispute it previously dropped last year. Until this market access and distribution friction is resolved, Nigeria’s import bill—and the pressure on the naira—will likely remain elevated.
