The Dangote Petroleum Refinery has commenced the loading of premium motor spirit (PMS), also known as petrol, at its gantry, signalling the beginning of a new era in Nigeria’s downstream petroleum sector.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPCL, started loading petrol on Sunday after deploying over 100 trucks to the petrol-loading gantry of Dangote refinery on Saturday afternoon, in preparation for the scheduled petrol loading on Sunday.
This marks a significant step following the Dangote refinery’s commencement of petrol production on 3 September. The refinery is projected to supply 25 million litres of petrol daily this month, with plans to increase to 30 million litres in October.
Speaking on the development, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, announced that agreements had been finalised for the first batch of petrol distribution.
He added that NNPC will begin supplying the refinery with 385,000 barrels of crude oil per day from 1 October, which will be paid for in naira.
Edun said, “From October 1, NNPC Ltd. will commence the supply of about 385kbpd of crude oil to the Dangote Refinery, to be paid for in naira. In return, the Dangote Refinery will supply PMS and diesel of equivalent value to the domestic market, to be paid for in naira.”
The move is expected to reduce pressure on the naira, eliminate unnecessary transaction costs, and improve the availability of petroleum products in the country.
Hopes for cheaper petrol rose as indications emerged that the product may sell for between N857 and N865 per litre as the NNPC begins distributing the product across the country.
However, the NNPC, the sole off-taker of petrol from the refinery, said it lifted the product at N898 per litre.
“We successfully loaded PMS at the Dangote Refinery today. The claim that we purchased it at N760 per litre is incorrect. For this initial loading, the price from the refinery was N898 per litre,” Olufemi Soneye, NNPCL spokesperson, said.
It is not yet disclosed what rate the NNPCL would sell to marketers and whether uniform product prices would apply at petrol stations nationwide.
President Bola Tinubu has made it clear that “the price at which petrol would be sold to Nigerians should not be such that it would place a heavy financial burden on them while dealing with the new reality of the prevailing price.”
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