Africa's largest refinery, Dangote Petroleum Refinery, began pricing its domestic fuel products in US dollars on 14 July 2026, abandoning naira-denominated sales it had introduced in 2024. The 700,000 barrel-per-day facility requires 13 to 15 crude cargoes per month but has been unable to secure adequate supply through Nigeria's government crude supply programme. The refinery set gasoline at $0.779 per litre, diesel at $1.087 per litre, and jet fuel at $0.942 per litre.
The shift reverses a 2024 initiative under which Dangote had committed to accepting naira for crude oil purchases, a programme designed to reduce dollar demand pressure in Nigeria's foreign exchange market. Bloomberg Markets reported that the refinery formally discontinued naira pricing for petroleum products, describing the move as a reflection of difficulties in implementing the local-currency crude supply arrangement.
The Nigerian naira is directly affected by this development, as the termination of naira-denominated crude transactions removes a mechanism that had been intended to support local currency use in the energy sector. DANGOTE.LG, the Lagos-listed equity of the Dangote group, is connected to the operational and pricing changes at the refinery.
No official government response from Nigerian authorities or the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation had been reported in the cluster as of 14 July 2026. The crude supply shortfall at the refinery reflects broader constraints in Nigeria's upstream oil production capacity, as noted by NewsAPI.
Sources: Oilprice, OilPrice, Bloomberg Markets